Daddy day care. Channel 4

[magicOC]

Anyone watching?

Tiggy i 100% agree with your post....i was shocked and appalled at the attitude of the staff toward the men....had that been men discussing women walking untrained into , say, building, then i should imagine there would (rightly) be a female uprising.
Having watched this programme, if my kids were in that nursery, today would have been their last day.

This has really disappointed me. So little depth. Also I would not be happy to have three oafs like this looking after my kids with no training! Wouldn't it be better to have them interact with their own kids? Gary in particular didn't seem to have bonded at all, wanting his old life back, in a way that would be labelled PND if in a woman. They all seem to have problems talking to the kids in an engaged, upbeat way. Even the hyperactive optician is very self absorbed in his "enthusiasm".

DH is a registered childminder with a Level 3 qualification (same as a nursery Room Leader).

He had to turn it off. It's a pity the programme makers can't hear him at this moment: their ears would be burned clean off their heads!

The young dark haired guy has said that hes been diagnosed with MS.
Im willing to bet that when this degenerative illness takes hold he will be expecting his wife to look after and help him even though hes not prepared to do the same for her now.

I've watched to the end now and it did get better towards the end. Really happy to hear Gary to say he's looking forward to his baby being a toddler and a bit more interesting.

I thought it was bloody awful and so did dp.

Dp is waaaaay better at looking after kids than most of the staff I saw on that programme as are an awful lot of men.

The sneering,condescending attitude those women had towards men in general let alone men working in childcare. There is no way on earth I'd want any of my kids in that environment day after day.

If they made a show with men sneering at women trying something they hadn't done before,making sweeping generalisations and generally putting the entire female sex down there would be uproar but hey it's funny to laugh at men after all they're all shit at looking after kids.

it seemed very dated and unrepresentative to me. Most modern dads I know are amazing!

What an opportunity missed this was. Ch4 had the chance to explore how men view childcare and how much childcare could do with more men in it.
Instead they make a shallow documentarty which, with the exception of the long commuting nursery worker, depicted all the people in it as either useless men / domineering women.
It will have done nothing to encourage men into childcare or to challenge assumptions that men "can't" parent effectively.
Really sad.
Channel 4 - must try harder!!

It didn't really work did it - load of crap.

I only watched about 2 minutes as thought it was condescending jugdmental sexist etc.

Also, the premise just didn't make sense. Being a good parent and knowing how to spend time with your own kids has very little in common with knowing how to manage a nursery full of kids. I'm an excellent mother [pats self on back] and I've no flpping idea how to get 2 dozen kids to sit down for a story.

What a shame, a waste of a great opportunity to recrute more men into child care. Men as role models are needed, in areas where there are lots of single parent families.

Women often have the opinion that childcare is very hard work, but rewarding. It appears that men on the other hand seem to have the opinion that it is simply playing all day.
Maybe channel 4 should be letting men know that it is hard work and rewarding.
This can be a career for men but you can not just walk into the job and play, you need qualifications, training, CRB clearance and most importantly a love of children.

I couldn't watch this programme. After five minutes of watching the men trying to herd far too many children, without any prior experience, to do a dance class, I just gave up. They were set up to fail and their ability to run dance classes for toddlers has nothing to do with their ability to parent their own children. What an utterly ridiculous programme, like something out of the early '80's.

Is it worth watching on catch up? Doesn't sound like it was very good?

If you want to feel cross and stabby watch it Charlie.

Gawd mum's on strike was much better than this. I work with a male nursery teacher who is superb with the children.

I would love to see Mum's on Strike back. In place of Loose Women preferably.

oh, I have enjoyed reading these comments.
To put a few facts straight- at the time of filming both my children were in this nursery. One is now in school and shock horror, my other child is still at the nursery.
There are about 5 men nursery nurses working there and not all the women are single mums (not that I would have a problem if they were).
The men were not left in charge of any child on their own without a member of staff being present at all times. The men also visited the nursery previous to them starting their placements. All parents were given a consent form to sign beforehand. Obviously I asked many questions before signing the consent form.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion regarding the actual programme and I do agree it would have been better for the men to have looked after their own children for a week but for whatever reason, channel four decided to focus in on the fact that a few workers are single mums and tried to portray that all men are rubbish at childcare.
Again, people can make their own opinions on who is a 'knob' etc but just for the record, the children actually had a fantastic time while they were there. They organised the farm trip, the bus activity and a big party for everyone at the end. The children particularly enjoyed Gary's Bear Hunt. I think his enthusiasm should be praised rather than criticised but each to their own.
Neither of my children were mentally scarred by the experience and I realise you judge what you see but TV editing has a lot to answer for.

Still very poor practice to have random people changing nappies and putting babies to bed. Wouldn't happen in my nursery.

Would some random blokes be good at wrangling large groups of toddlers with no experience/training?

I doubt some random women would be either

Are the nursery planning to complain about the way they and their staff were portrayed? I presume that C4 were less than honest about how the broadcast would look.

jussi Thanks for that, interesting to hear your perspective. I think most posters feel here that the major fault lies with the programme makers for aiming at cheap laughs/sneers/gender stereotypes instead of what they were purporting to do, investigate male attitudes to caring for children.

As Rita says above, the nappy changing illustrates that - really this should have been out of bounds, but presumably the 'comedy value' of inept men struggling to change a child was too good to resist

Glad the kids genuinely enjoyed the events put on. I do find it a little sad though that Gary could summon up that enthusiasm and creativity for the nursery kids but didn't seem bothered to expend that much effort on his own.

Yes, they are complaining.

Glad to hear they have some men. Channel 4 website said not, but I assume they thought it would be funnier if they lied.
As far as the men go...I think they all did quite well. Jay could work in childcare if he wanted. Garry could do something child related but would need to calm down in a nursery. I really liked stefan. Partly because he was taking the role of father really seriously, but mostly because he was so much like Archie The Inventor.

I had no idea that this was meant to be a documentary, as some posters upthread have said. C4 really has gone to the dogs, hasn't it?

As a piece of entertainment it was fairly typical of the WifeSwap/BigBrother genre, but even more petty and shallow.

As a documentary it is insulting.