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

Honestly, I’ve reported the racist posts. Let Mumsnet deal with her or him.
I’m 99% certain it’s of him based on other information

The difference between a male nursery worker and a normal dad is the why.

You see if a man (or woman) want children it is accepted by them that there's some unpleasant work like changing nappies involved.
It is not something that is actively chosen but a necessity if they want their child to be clean and grow up healthy.

How is it a necessity for a male nursery worker to do this job? It really bloody isn't.

Out of all the jobs out there that pay better. Why, why this?
It's not high paid (as I said previously if the pay was 6- figures I'd get it. Like oh yeah they just want the money. Fair enough.), people view it as unmanly (at best) and sinister (at worst).
Yet they do it. Why? Why do they put themselves through that?
What's the reward? ( Please no guff about children smiling. I don't buy it.)

Yeah I'm suspicious in a way that I'm not with women choosing this job.
Purely because the vast, vast majority of sex offenders are male and a nursery is the perfect environment for these creatures.

@marcyhermit Men make up 2 or 3% of the childcare workforce and 95+% of the workers convicted of child sexual abuse in nurseries.

The useful statistic would be the percentage of male childcare workers convicted of child sexual abuse in nurseries.

Even it it were one in a hundred of the 2 or 3%, that'd mean that men who abuse children comprise two or three in every ten thousand nursery workers.

You say that women are 98% of the nursery workforce, and are responsible for five percent of the sexual abuse. Which means that women abusers comprise about five hundred in every ten thousand nursery workers.

Are you sure about your figures?

This is an illogical conclusion to draw.

Caring for one's own children is entirely different to being paid to mind a stranger's children – and working in a nursery has no bearing on whether a man does housework, cooks meals, or takes care of life admin in his own home, for his family.

While current statistics on sexual abuse in nursery settings is unavailable (the best data I know of is an old study from the 70s), general statistics show that child sexual abuse is perpetrated by males 96% of the time. It is also generally more severe when committed by males, and more likely to involve penetration and sadism.

So, males are approximately 32 times more likely to sexually abuse children than females despite the fact that they spend much less time in contact with children, so have less opportunity to offend. If they spent an equal amount of time in contact with children as male nursery workers, that number might be higher.

Add into that the fact that 4% of the male population is sexually attracted to under-10s, and would abuse them if they thought they could get away with it, and that men who are sexually attracted to children are nearly 3 times more likely to work with them than other men...

You're looking at a situation where paedophiles see nurseries as perfect hunting grounds, and actively coach each other online on how to look like the perfect, harmless, wholesome male role model. Decent men are less likely to want to work in nurseries, and those who do want to are discouraged due to low pay, and yes, stigma. But paedophiles are not discouraged - they're highly motivated, and as everyone should know, can be excellent at appearing likeable, or even pillars of the community, since they groom parents just as much as their victims.

So you end up with nurseries where: paedophiles are actively trying to infiltrate them, because men who are sexually attracted to children are three times more likely to want to work with them, and men in general are 32 times more likely to sexually abuse children, while in addition, one offender can have hundreds of victims.

By adding male nursery workers, the risk of sexual abuse skyrockets.

I'm not sure why people would want to put their child into an environment where the risk of sexual abuse is deliberately and unnecessarily elevated. What needs to happen is that males need to be banned from working in nurseries, females need to be paid higher wages to make the job more attractive, and safeguarding needs to be stepped up.

Hmm I have to disagree here. It’s very different. Children in nursery are of an age where they can’t speak at all or effectively to tell someone what could potentially be happening to them whereas school age children could and being in a school environment as apposed to a nursery environment would make things much harder to be alone with or have the opportunity to abuse a child.

The fact that you think that men are so manly that they would only choose to be in a caring role if they got sexual gratification from it means that you think a man would only do any "woman's work" if he was similarly rewarded. So yes of course the woman who thinks men only care for children to have sex with them will have a husband who thinks men shouldn't do childcare or housework unless it gets them sex. You think it's unnatural for men to want to look after children. You can't have it both ways.

You know when kids are sexually abused and don't speak up? It isnt because they don't know how to talk. You are as unlikely to know your primary school child is being abused because of how the abuser has groomed them as you are your nursery aged child.

Yes the use of numbers here is very misleading.

There is a 5000% increased risk. Yeah but from 0.0000000000000000000001% it rose 5000%.

You're arguing a point I didn't make. I don't think all male nursery workers are paedophiles.

Personally, most men I know are great, hands on, involved fathers who perform all parts of childcare for their own children, who they love, but have no desire to care for random children.

It's very strange to think that one's ability to be a good parent rests on one's desire to look after other people's children for money. I have zero desire to work with children at all, and yet I manage to be a good parent, much like my DH is.

It's odd that you can't seem to separate the personal from the professional.

What are the actual numbers? Do you even know? And as those are only based on cases that come to light, how likely are offenders to be caught – how often, with non verbal toddlers and babies, is abuse never discovered?

In this case, a man raped and abused at least 12 children, aged 5 months to 2 years, and fed hundreds of others food containing his semen. He worked at 23 different childcare centres between 2017 and 2025, and I have to think many of his victims will never be discovered, due to their ages. Many parents will never know if their child was one of those he sexually abused.

And he was only one man. There are many more out there.

I said this before but we actually need more data to work out how serious this problem is.

How many children have been abused at nursery in recent years?
What are the offenses broken down by type?
What sex are the perpetrators?
How many males work in nurseries?
How many children are at nursery?

We only seem to know the answer to the last question. 2-3% I think someone said.

I am surprised it isn't easier to search for convictions given that justice is supposed to be public and we all have to pay for it.

I do think pre verbal and children are in a particularly vulnerable position as they can't describe their abuse so abusers can act with impunity.

Abusers have to put a lot of work into making sure older children don't speak out which limits their ability to act. Grooming, threats, choice of isolated victims, shaming, making the victim feel complicit in the abuse. They have a whole host of awful tactics to try to get away with it but even so many children will eventually confide in someone. This is why abuse has historically been prevalent in boarding schools and care homes where perpetrators had access but children were isolated from trusted adults such as caring parents.

However I take @OtterlyAstounding's point. There will certainly have been more offenses than convictions.

Posted my view a few times but want to repeat as some of the arguments round stats (which I agree with totally), primary schools, caring husbands, men doing other jobs etc all overlook one point. Unease. That’s what OP raised initially. I also feel unease with men in certain roles with children. Mostly my concern is around nurseries but I’ve had the occasional other instances when I feel a bit icky and wonder about intentions. It’s a deep seated concern and worry which won’t go away and never will regardless of any argument put up. It’s a biological imperative to protect your child and for many mother impossible to ignore and shouldn’t be. We seem to have forgotten that our instincts are programmed into us for very good reasons and should not be ignored. If there’s any doubt at all, which I’m sorry there is, the good of the kids comes first even if some probably innocent men are hurt or offended and excluded from jobs they may be good at.

@BeAmberZebra I suppose the problem is what to do with that unease? Say you decide to send your child to a nursery and there are only women there but then they employ a man? What do you do? Withdraw your child? They may be happy and settled. What if the other nurseries are full and you have to go to work?

I had a situation with my child's nursery years ago when I could see it had gone downhill. A very experienced lady had left and the staff were very junior, young and not that great. My instincts told me, this place really isn't as good as it used to be and I really need to find something else. But then I was very busy and shortly going on mat leave anyway.

Then whilst my child was still there there was an incident when a young toddler broke their arm. The staff didn't notice for ages then phoned the mum saying to pick the child up as he was crying and had a stomach ache. The mum got there and her child's arm was dangling at a weird angle in front of his stomach whilst he screamed his head off. She withdrew her child immediately but when I spoke to her she was finding it very hard to get to the bottom of what had actually happened.

We don't know all the stats but we do know:
There are around 350,000 people working in early years
3% of them are male (around 10,500 men)
In Australian research, 4% of men admit to having a sexual interest in children under 10 (they would do it if they knew they could get away with it).
Men who were sexually attracted to children were 2.73 times more likely to work with children than those who weren't
Here
In the last 6 months in the UK, I found 3 convictions of male nursery workers for sexual abuse and rape of children in their care (Vincent Chan, Nathan Bennett and Thomas Waller)
In the last 6 months in the UK I found 1 conviction of a female nursery worker sharing child abuse images online that was not related to any of the children in her care (Zara Lancashire).

Some people might decide that the chance of your child being unlucky enough to meet the 1 in 50 (or 1 in 10 I think if nursery workers are more likely to be attracted to children than the general population) male workers that are paedophiles is worth taking, but for me it is too much of a risk.

Some one did a freedom of information request on this.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/childabuseinanurserycaresettingbyanemployee

And the answer is that they don't know. No one is keeping tabs on how many children are being abused in nurseries.

I find this extremely shocking tbh. How are young children going to be kept safe if the extent of the problem isn't being assessed?

Maybe I should write to my MP. I think this is information that the ONS should be putting together. Definitely for nursery settings but then also for schools as well.

It seems crazy to me that we have this huge safeguarding framework in place, with guidance and inspections and DBS checks but we don't monitor how well it is working to protect children.

YANBU. Men shouldn’t be allowed to work in nurseries - the risks are far too high.

I’m so sick of woke nonsense that puts men’s feelings above children’s safety.

When you consider the Australia for example only just introduced a national DBS system in 2017 and prior to that you could commit murder in one state and work with children in another completely unhindered, the Australian university that conducted the research is actually light years ahead of the schools nurseries and daycare facilities implementing it on a day-to-day basis.

The US and the UK aren’t even conducting this research. How far behind are we?

People overlook it when women act inappropriately with young children, yet react strongly when men do the same. Men are quickly labeled as abusers, while women are seen as harmless, which is just wrong—no one should touch children that way. I don’t understand why people here view women as harmless; it’s such a wrong, outdated, incorrect, and unfair mindset. No human being is truly harmless. Personally, I believe it’s safest to treat everyone as guilty until proven innocent. I’ve never felt comfortable leaving my children alone with someone I don’t know well, whether man or woman. People can be seriously messed up, no matter who they are.

I'm such a huge supporter of home education. With technology advancing so quickly, online learning is taking off, and it’s honestly a safer setup for everyone.

Men and women shouldn’t work in nurseries unless they’ve been proven 100% innocent through several tests beforehand. There must be some way to show who is trustworthy and who isn’t, right?

I don't conform to the notion that men are automatically abusers and women are harmless; history and life experience have taught me that things aren't black and white.

I’m a SAHM, a type often maligned and despised on Mumsnet, and I never used nurseries—thankfully, given the current situation. Just sprinkling in a bit of sarcasm here.

Do.you think Zara (who regularly touted for babysitting.jobs on her social media accounts) drew the line at kids from work? Or do you think its more likely she just didnt get caught with images of the children she took sexual pictures of at work?

The reality is that the women taking pictures of children and sharing them in paedophile rings probably haven't been caught because people trust women so much. So while you're moving your child from a nursery with an innocent man, you have put them with a woman who Will never be caught for what she does or did to your child.

I'm not in the police so have no background information about the investigation.