Are women better than men at childcare?

[charlotteabigailharris]

I am currently a SAHM and have a 3yo DS and am 6 months pregnant.
I am doing an Economics degree with the open university and really could use your help for my dissertation....
I am researching whether it is accepted/not, that women are generally better than men at carrying out unpaid work - specifically childcare?
Let me know your thoughts,
Thank you.

DW is a very practical person.
She enjoys tent shopping, I suppose you could say it's for the family's benefit though. The dog is her dog, I wouldn't call it looking after the family's dog. She got the dog because she's at home. If she worked we wouldn't have got it.
Planting seeds is her hobby, it only tangentially benefits the family.
Other hobbies (done during her working day) include wood carving, various other crafty things and her sport, which she does during the day.
As well as the aforementioned reading which she does a lot of.
I'm not complaining, but she gets a lot of personal time, you can't spin it as not for her benefit at all.

There are plenty of things I do in my paid work that I enjoy and missed whilst on maternity leave. Just because you enjoy walking the dog it doesn't mean it isn't work. The dog has to be walked. Someone has to do that. Ergo it is work.

Generally, yes. But not because of biology, because of conditioning, modelling and reinforcement of all the main components from early childhood and from seeing and identifying with women performing these tasks and not see ing men doing them.

The good news is all this can change and is beginning to in some circles.

Surely the people who are best at childcare are the ones who have been trained and educated in child care regardless of gender stereotypes.

Some people will have 'trained' by being part of a large family or having a sibling considerably younger. Some will be professionals working in nurseries or as nannies.

As someone said earlier a woman may not have held a baby until she holds her own and at that time she will be no better at childcare than anyone else including the father who also might never have held a baby.

One thing that might be perpetuating this nonsense is a lack of men in nursery and primary school teaching. Having men looking after children more generally, rather than just their own, might dispel some of these myths. Sadly, our society - and I am in the UK, so I don't know about other countries - actively discourages it. Any men who work with kids seem to be automatically labelled as a risk.

There was a thread on here a while back where some people thought it was acceptable for men to be asked to move seats on a plane if they were sat next to an unaccompanied child. That is a huge problem.

No Yops the huge problem is that 99% of sexual violence is perpetuated by men.

"Having men looking after children more generally, rather than just their own, might dispel some of these myths"

Chicken and egg, Yops - if more men did day to day care for their own children, caring for children would become less of a perceived female task.

Is that particularly relevant when talking about childcare abilities of the sexes and the imbalance of early education Scallops? Or do you just like to shout it every now and the at posters you think are male?

I feel at the moment there's an overwhelming belief that childcare equals women's work, so men don't really try/ get the opportunity. Hopefully that will change. There's currently a huge thread in chat/AIBU with many posters only wanting women to change their daughter's nappies in nurseries. There's a long way to go.

True Yonic, so let's get more men in childcare.

Don't be ridiculous. Of course not

Yops is male, Tiggy, he's said so before.

I wish that childcare and early year teaching had more men involved, I just think perception is linked to "family childcare" split too.

Agree with ShadowFire

There's still an expectation that childcare and housework are for women, so from an early age, women and girls are encouraged to practice these things in a way that men and boys aren't.

People who are encouraged throughout their entire lifetime to practise a thing, are better at that thing.

If there is a true innate difference, because of hormones or brain chemistry or something - we CAN'T TELL - because there is no way to compare what people would have been ike without this training.

So yeah, on balance women are better, but that may not answer your question. (bearing in mind overlapping bell curves and whatnot - any individual woman may or may not be better than any individual man).

That wasn't the issue Yonic. It was Scallop's(/Rainbow's) use of sexual violence statistics as the means of a put-down during a conversation about childcare.

I think it's one of those things that will take decades to change.

Sadly, I think it proves my point. All elephants are grey animals and so on....

Yops, I think scallops was indicating that your statement didn't qualify as a "huge" problem. I may be wrong though.

I disagree with the airlines' stance on seating, BTW, and with all posters on other MN topics saying male nursery workers shouldn't change nappies.

Plenty of the things 'workers' do during the working day isn't really work.

Commuting- being able to listen to music you like in peace/reading a book/paper

Lunch- getting peace to eat also reading/chatting maybe a quick walk or gym class

Tea breaks, chatting, someone to listen to your woes

Cigarette breaks

Toilet breaks where no one follows you in

General office chatter/time wasting /booking holidays online

Travel time between appointments- again more music/reading

Training days-a break from the normal routine and often a shorter routine and free nice lunch

Work parties/socialising

Maybe even the opportunity for a weekend away-hotel luxuries

Waiting time for meetings/people running late-time to check phone/pay bill/check fb/mn

Ime a much easier life than the hell of childcare.

I am not rainbow just to clarify.

What I was trying to point out was that Yops seems to think the problem is that men are perceived as being predatorial and that is the problem of those doing the perceiving. Whereas the fact that an overwhelming majority of violence is perpetrated by men is a real problem. If the perception of men as being predatorial is so prevalent and harmful to men why aren't they doing anything about reducing the level of violence (rather than just claiming women and children are lying about it, for example)?

Also evidence would suggest that when men are in childcare/teaching small children roles they appear to be so good at it they get promoted to the top of the tree much faster and in much greater proportions. So are these perceptions actually damaging? It certainly doesn't seem to stop the money/power flowing.

Tiggy... If you're suggesting that men's predilection for violence (as suggested by the crime stats) has no bearing on the incorrect beliefs around men in childcare, what do you think underpins that instead?

The other thing is it really isn't uncommon when women ask men to step up to the plate with regards childcare for men to come back with the exact response Yops did in that men are perceived to be untrustworthy when they do. This has the twin effect of excusing them from childcare and also putting the onus back on women to change that perception. Without actually tackling the root of that perception, which men really need to own for themselves.

The perception greatly outweighs the reality. In the same way that only a handful of muslims are terrosists, only a handful of men are predatory paedophiles. But the media is full of scare-mongering. I think it's similar to the rape myth that women lie - yes, a very few do, but those cases are highlighted and sensationalised.

I am talking specifically about sexual predators here. I wasn't referring to adult-on-child violence, as it isn't something that gets much focus, and isn't sensationalised in the same way that predatory sexual behaviour is. I think this perception is harmful, and prevents men getting involved in childcare as a career. If more men were involved in childcare, there would be less fuss and idolisation of stay-at-home dads. I really don't know how to fix it though.

Yops, isn't it easier to fix the SAHD side of the equation? Things like shared parental leave help and I would love to see a use it or lose it piece of that for men.

Narrowing or removing the pay gap should also help SAHD and APL uptake prevalence.

I really find the lionization of men who do childcare/teaching irritating. Let's face it - the reason they are no longer to the forefront of those careers is because they're perceived to be women's work, and and any work seen as women's work sheds status and loses pay. But this idea that they are totally brilliant and would solve society if only they could be accepted into this kind of work by maurading harridans is totally false. As is the accompanying notion that the people who will do this work - women - have devalued education by their innate rubbishness.

Men are happy to be involved with children when it interests them. They run sports teams, scouts, all kinds of things. They just don't want to assign themselves as women in a career sense. That's all them.