To think male nursery workers should be banned for safety reasons?

[Carla786]

I KNOW most men who work in them are fine but sexual abuse in nurseries is overwhelmingly committed by men. No more men, much less abuse risk.
Yes we need more CCTV etc to watch bad women but it cuts SA risk immeasurably.

We can still have male primary teachers etc kids are old enough to speak up then.

And yes, you can ban on the basis of sex for safety reasons. In women's refuges, eg.

Not all SEN children will be verbal or as verbal as a typical 4 year old.

That's really sad. I've got some friends who are long-term teachers , not in the UK, and they are seeing the same.

I know a male teacher who refused to get involved in that kind of care to protect himself. Sensibly too.

Of course, by school age, your children, without medical reasons, shouldn't need a teacher to help them with toileting anyway.

Most children aren't SEN. Those cases need to be considered as edge cases to the majority case. This is about broad brush policies to protect as many children as we can from abuse

Exactly what I mean by safe and normal male teachers knowing why toileting help isn't their role

SA.

Other forms of abuse don't seem to be as important for some reason.

This thread is about sexual abuse...

This

And how many exactly primary age kids do speak up when they are able to? You have missed the point totally with this. Just because they can physically talk doesn’t mean they will, or feel they can. SA is so much more than kids being able to “tell”.

Primary teachers typically have less opportunity though as they aren't doing intimate care and are in a classroom setting.

Exactly.

How many grown women don't speak up when they are SA?

"Your feelings about DH career choice. They are irrelevant to the actual facts here that we can quickly and easily reduce real cases and risk of CSA in early years settings by removing male workers outright"

The actual facts are that in the UK banning all male workers breaks discrimination law.

People have argued that banning all men is "proportionate" to protecting children so would be permitted but this seems unlikely to be agreed by a court of law so a ban is unlikely to happen unless implemented by parliament. Stronger safeguarding rules such seems more likely.

Which discrimination law are you referring to? Our flagship 'anti-discrimination' legislation includes explicit provision to discriminate, in many different contexts in order to protect everyone's human rights.

I'm not sure I've seen a test case to bar men from working in early years settings on account of their higher liklihood of hurting children, but it would be interesting.

What's also likely is parents come to their senses and begin to select settings that do not hire men or do not allow men to change their child's nappy

I'm not a teacher but, if I were, no way would I risk changing any child either. I don't want to be accused of anything myself.

The evidence I’ve seen suggests that in daycare settings the majority of substantiated cases are neglect or emotional mistreatment (shouting, rough handling, poor supervision).

And the fact that most perpetrators are women isn’t really because women are “more emotionally abusive” — it’s mainly because childcare is something like 90–95% female. If almost all staff are women, most incidents will involve women by default.

If there were equal numbers of male carers, we’d probably see similar overall rates of emotional/neglect issues, because those behaviours tend to be linked to stress, burnout, and poor staffing ratios rather than sex.

Re physical abuse, I think it’s worth distinguishing between deliberate violence and stressed, rough handling. A lot of “physical abuse” in nursery reports includes things like yanking or dragging a child when a carer is overwhelmed, which isn’t OK but isn’t the same as someone hitting kids out of cruelty. Since childcare staff are overwhelmingly female and under a lot of stress, most incidents involve women by default. That doesn’t really show women are more physically abusive — it shows burnout and staffing problems.

'The “studies” are bullshit'

• what a bold statement! How do you know?

Thank you.

The evidence seems to point to emotional and physical abuse being roughly equivalent fir male & female carers, so banning women hypothetically probably wouldn't reduce emotional abuse much.

Otoh sexual abuse is vastly more likely to be by men. So banning them WOULD at least massively reduce CSA.

I think you’d open the floodgates re men working with children. What if you get a couple of high profile cases about sexual abuse by teachers or sports coaches? And the data shows that there’s just as much sexual abuse in schools/ clubs / care homes / hospitals as there ever was in nurseries (which is likely already true).

I think the issue with this debate is that people have a visceral reaction to CSA (understandably). People worry about it more than about neglect or emotional or physical abuse or preventable accident even though these are likely far more prevalent and can be just as damaging. The media report on CSA more because it grabs attention and then you read about a few cases and see a pattern and perceive a high level of risk. But really if you want to improve children’s safety in nurseries there are probably a thousand better ways to do it. And most will be pretty boring like improving first aid training etc.

And I don’t think it’s about protecting men’s “feelings”. It’s that if you feed boys such as negative view of themselves - and it really is the most negative view possible that they can’t be trusted not to abuse young children even if there is nothing in their conduct to suggest that they would- what do you expect those boys to turn into as adults? And if boys grow up with only female influence or contact with unrelated males only with a female chaperone and where the man is held in some suspicion what are they going to think about men? I think these are already issues.

There is some tension between safeguarding and children having exposure to a wide range of people and situations. And if we’re at the point of safeguarding children from half the population I personally think we’d have got the balance wrong and there must be a better way.

Well said!

Father...?

Re this point : really is the most negative view possible that they can’t be trusted not to abuse young children even if there is nothing in their conduct to suggest that they would'

The point is not that ALL or MOST men are a danger.

The point is that for various reasons MOST men do not want to work in nurseries

SOME good ones do, but a minority.

And men who are motivated by paedophilia are disproprtionately likely to work in nurseries. The WHOLE point is they, the culprits, are NOT representative of MOST men.

I wish more good men DID want to do nursery work, but I don't think enough do.

I take it you're a man with kids? What is your opinion?

And if boys grow up with only female influence or contact with unrelated males only with a female chaperone and where the man is held in some suspicion what are they going to think about men

• they should have dads, grandads, uncles, teachers, coaches, etc A male teacher etc does not need a female chaperone.

My son's dad agrees (a man, obviously). Too many reports coming out recently of male workers abusing kids.