AIBU to feel uneasy about male staff in nurseries?

[Beautifulsiro56]

Males working in my cbildrends nursery- makes me feel so uncomfortable
Why would a male want to work in a nursery? Most nursery abuse cases are men.
Men shouldn't be allowed to work in nurseries? AIBU

No i think safeguarding should improve to a place where nobody can abuse a child in a nursery. I bet there are far more children getting pinched by a woman today in a nursery than there are men sexually abusing them. The pinching is a bigger and more pressing issue.

Leaving your children in the care of strangers put them at risk, this is not new information
Even on the lowest of levels leaving them to cry for longer than they ought to be left
Not feeding them when they’re hungry
Not allowing them to stop eating when they’re full
Forcing them to sleep out of sheer boredom
I’ve stood and watched in playgrounds teachers swinging kids around by the arms hurting them in the full view of all of the parents and all of the teachers
No safeguarding that’s infallible is available other than your children. Don’t leave your side.
We can however reduce the risk of men wanting to interfere with young children sexually so we’re going to do that where we can. If we are a civilised society.

It isnt about having safe men, it is about having men who are driven to protect women and children. I'm sorry your father's and male partners have never displayed that trait to you. It must be awful to only know men who want to harm you. You must be very damaged by it.

Oh no you don’t. You referred to a cultural difference where men protected women and children out of chivalry.
Which culture? So that I can dig out the statistics and annihilate you.

I am prepared to say that the vast, vast majority of young women treat the children decently and do the basics quite well given that after enough training people don't need to be enthusiastic to do certain aspects of their jobs well.
Nappy changing becomes something they can do in their sleep.

(I would not expect miracles and expect them to speak to little Theo in ten different languages so he'll be multi-lingual by the age of 5, though.)

In any case, this is whataboutery.

That would be nice. But given human error and bad actors, we're unlikely to ever reach the stage where safeguarding can stop all abuse before it happens.

Given that, I'm sure most parents would rather their child was being pinched occasionally, rather than raped.

So it makes sense to me to almost entirely eliminate the risk of rape, with the only drawback being that some men don't get to do the job they want (as many people don't!) and children don't get unrelated male role models until primary school.

Why is that not proportionate to you? Why do you want to keep the risk of rape?

Have you read the statistics I shared?

Yeah I think the incidence if what you describe to be happening every day is more of an issue than male EY workers sexually abusing children. If you know all this to be the case, I'm surprised you aren't doing more about that. I didnt know things to be that bad.

No. All ive seen is you refer to them.

Out of interest, have you ever spoken to a psychiatrist about any of your views? Or an experienced psychologist? Just sat and had a chat with them about how you view the world etc?

What a pettily passive-aggressive dodge that is, trying to paint another poster as damaged and thus irrational, while slathering on faux sympathy.

So you have absolutely nothing to back up your claims and your argument is suggesting that the posters that don’t agree with you are psychologically unsound
Gotcha

I shared a link to the statistics, and the source. I'll wait until you've read them, and have something of worth to add to the discussion.

New people join MN all the time. And existing users may not have read every thread. Or people might want to discuss again.

If you are bored by seeing repeat topics, maybe don’t click on them, or perhaps reflect that you are spending too much time on here.

It really shows up their (lack of) argument. All I can conclude is that they're in favour of a higher risk of child rape, because 'menz feelz' as a PP put it.

Hah! I'm not surprised. Thanks for doing the search and giving me a heads up.

How do people ‘choose a nursery where no men work’? Do you actually ask them if they have a ‘no men’ policy (would this even be legal?) or do you just check the staff page for any men? And if so, what if a staff member gets ill and they get a temp worker in who happens to be male? Or if they happen to employ a man as a permanent employee next month?

I suppose you would have to ask, and request to be informed if they bring on a male staffer? Unfortunately it would be tricky to ensure, I imagine.

If parents made their feelings clear, the person would never get to work in the Nursery
People don’t get jobs all the time for all sorts of discriminatory reasons and some of them are utterly illogical.
No Small to medium sized business is going to risk the parents withdrawing.
The large of corporate are in a harder position to implement the unofficial policy doesn’t mean that they don’t, but they are backed to somewhat into a corner with less discretion available to them to act in accordance to the parents preferences
But personally, I would never put my child in a corporate nursery any more than I would my parents in a corporate nursing home

Only a tiny number of nurseries have male staff so it isn't really an issue to avoid them.
I have three children who have attended 4 nurseries between them and none have had any men working there.

I think you're adding together too many stats that aren't linked.
The important ones to me are - 4% of men would have sexual contact with a child under 10 if they could get away with it.
and
Men who have sexual feelings towards children (I believe this was of any age) are 2.73 more likely to work with children than those who don't.
So maybe from that you can assume that around 10% of men who work with children would have sex with children under 10 if they could get away with it.

Ah, thank you! I was sure I had to be going wrong somewhere. So 24% for all under 18s, but roughly more around 10% for under 10s?

Still, even 10% is terribly high, especially considering how many victims one offender alone can have.

Haven't RTFT. But more children are abused by their own fathers than by male nursery workers. Does that mean we should prevent all men from having access to their own children?

There is of course an element of risk in all aspects of allowing other people to care for your children, so if that (understandably) is a risk you don't want to take - then the only viable solution is for you not to use childcare - either paid or family/friends.

Of course I don't. I'm just not seeing why it's a bad thing for nursery workers to do fun and exciting things for children, and not just the mundane stuff. I'm sure that staff in all good nurseries would prioritise this for their young cares - why does it have anything to do with their sex? Do good parents of babies and toddlers just routinely ignore them until they need a change or a feed?

Naturally, if any male or female worker is neglecting the basic essential duties and leaving them for others to pick up, whilst they ONLY do fun stuff, then that's a case for management to raise and stamp it out/begin a disciplinary.

More men have access to their own kids than do nursery workers, so the stats will be skewed of course! And only 2% of nursery workers are men.

I see it as doing what I can to avoid unnecessary risk. I easily found a nursery with no men ( admittedly a long time ago).

of course they do, but the point still remains. a huge number of male relatives abuse their children - so assuming they're all a risk (as the OP is doing with male nursery workers), then they all ought to be kept at bay?

Women have been found guilty of abuse in nurseries too, so handing our children over is always going to be a risk!