Men providing intimate care in childcare

[DidYouMeanToBeSoRudolph]

I run a nursery and in the past, I've faced situations where parents have asked that male members of staff refrain from carrying out intimate care for their children or change them from wet/dirty clothes. I've always said that we have safeguarding policies in place that means that all staff members aren't left on their own with children, the toilets are in the middle of the nursery which means that the staff members are visible when they're assisting children etc to protect all the children from all teachers and that we can't accommodate specifying certain members of staff not being able to do certain things because of their sex or any other reason. I've never had anyone decide to withdraw their child because of this, although they'd obviously be within their rights to find somewhere else if they weren't happy.

Over the past 10 years, at various settings, we've always had at least one man in the team and I think having men in the workforce is valuable for the children. However, have I been handling this right? I wouldn't expect an adult woman not to be able to choose the sex of their intimate care provider so am I wrong to deny parents the chance to exercise this choice on behalf of their children?

I don't think I am but am doubting myself.

No, that’s bananas. That’s like saying men shouldn’t be allowed to teach young children. I would be happy for any member of staff who was properly trained and DBS checked to undertake the care of my children in a nursery setting, whatever their sex, including intimate care. Personally, I think such a request is batshit.

I think you are doing all you can to protect children and adults ( from accusations) .

It is a tricky situation as I know I would always ask for a female for anything intimate at the doctors or anything like that but that is purely for my comfort levels , I feel a child would be just as comfortable with a male or a female

Do these parents allow the child's father to do the same care?

You are doing all you can to protect children and adults from accusations but you dont know if any of the children in your care have been abused by men and so you should listen to the parents.

And don't confuse a nursery worker with a parent.

You've done the right thing, imo. It's not the same as an adult women or older girl who may have very valid reasons for not wanting intimate care from a man. Babies and young children don't care, they aren't aware of themselves in that way.

Our nursery in general for all children has the change area visible from everywhere (it’s effectively a glass box) and no one does it alone (we are in Sweden, Male nursery staff much more common here.) however if a parent requests only female staff I think you should respect that. You don’t know if the child has been abused for example. Or religious reasons etc.

I think I would be happy with a blanket policy that provides safety then any specific issues dealt with on top of that. There are surely guidelines for best safe practice though? What do they say?

On a personal level I’m happy having my child changed by the male staff in the same safe setting/process as the female staff . I wouldn’t hesitate to raise any specific concerns I had with the nursery though and if my child, god forbid, had been harmed or abused by a male I’d be working with nursery to see how we could move forward.

Do these parents allow the child's father to do the same care?

Sometimes they don't. Although this wasn't with a parent, I had a recent supervision with a mature student who's doing a placement with us and she said in her culture (she is Gujurati and Sikh - not sure which of the two she was referring to or whether she meant it was a more localised custom), men didn't do intimate care for children. Her husband had never changed a nappy for any of their children and she said she probably would have made a similar request if her children had gone to a nursery.

Even disregarding that though, I think this might also stray into known risks versus unknown risks (sharing loos at home with known and trusted men not being the same as opening up public ones to any man) so I can sort of see where they're coming from but having been so passionate about including and celebrating men in early years, I'm now seeing that perhaps some issues around this are more nuanced than I initially thought and it's tricky to navigate.

I suspect some “religious reasons” for fathers not changing nappies are the same old sexist ones in a different guise.

If you look at news reports , there seems to be a growing number of women who seem to be hurting children whether it's sexually or in other ways.

I'm a parent that has no problem with male staff members at nurseries doing the whole job. They have trained and worked as hard as the females. They've passed the same background checks so I see no need to feel suspicious of them.

I don't care what gender/sex the nursery worker is, I just want them to offer my child a fantastic level of care!

It's not the same as an adult women or older girl who may have very valid reasons for not wanting intimate care from a man. Babies and young children don't care, they aren't aware of themselves in that way.

This was my thinking too. And it seems important to challenge stereotypes of who can provide care and be nurturing, which is why I value having men on the team.

But it's true that if a parent had said their child had been abused by a man and so they wanted only women to be involved in intimate care, I would accommodate that. And it seems unfair to expect parents to have to disclose that information in order to get tailored care, but on the other hand, I'd hope it was something they would share with us so we could make sure we put in provisions in place for that child and make sure we could meet their needs in a suitable way so perhaps that is information that does need to be shared and it isn't unfair to expect parents to disclose it?

Sorry, I know this is basically a stream of consciousness but there's a lot to consider.

All adults in a nursery setting have physical and structural power over the children in their care and all adults need to follow safeguarding procedures.

I have no idea what normal procedure would be but my gut feeling would be that if additional procedures are needed for a particular child left in your care (who is presumably too young to articulate their own needs) you need more information.

but on the other hand, I'd hope it was something they would share with us so we could make sure we put in provisions in place for that child and make sure we could meet their needs in a suitable way so perhaps that is information that does need to be shared and it isn't unfair to expect parents to disclose it?

Sorry x-posted.

I think it's difficult to understand how you could provide adequate care to a child who had suffered trauma without having at least some knowledge that they had suffered trauma.

I think it's a knee jerk reaction. You don't get a lot of male nursery staff so when someone comes across it for the first time their instinctive reaction is against it. I think your way of dealing with it is the right one however it might be worth asking whether there are any specific reasons the parents don't want a man doing the nappy changes. That way if there is a religious reason or history of abuse then they would have a chance to discuss it with you and you could decide whether it was reasonable to make an exception in that particular case.

Babies and young children don't care, they aren't aware of themselves in that way.

Although babies may not have a developed pre-frontal cortex and be able to state in a conscious way that something is frightening them or they don't like something, the limbic part of their brain certainly functions, and if a baby has been abused then being changed by a man could frighten them. Think of abused animals that become scared of men.

There is a lot of pre verbal trauma that gets diagnosed later on perhaps as personality disorders, the person never knows where it has come from or why they are feeling emotional pain or behaving in certain ways because they don't remember it, but it is there imprinted in their neural pathways out of the reach of their conscious thought.

Interesting question, I've never thought about it before. I think there might be a case for men (or anyone) not changing babies if they are obviously distressed by it and not by women, but this won't be the case for most children (well, hopefully)

I'm not in any way suggesting that parents shouldn't be listened to if they have issues around who changes their baby. But there shouldn't be a generic policy that men cannot provide intimate care.

Clearly if a baby is upset by nappy changes by a particular person, then it should be considered by the nursery and changes made.

If I’m being honest - I probably have a bias towards women for some jobs and that would include nursery care, child minder, nanny or babysitter - also always told my kids to approach a woman if they were lost or needed help rather than a man. I might change my mind nursery wise depending on the circumstances

It's not the same as an adult women or older girl who may have very valid reasons for not wanting intimate care from a man. Babies and young children don't care, they aren't aware of themselves in that way.

I agree. I would refuse to have intimate treatments or care carried out by a man, even if I was completely sure that he was a decent person who would never mistreat me, because I would consider it an affront to my dignity and right to privacy. Babies don’t have any dignity and they don’t understand or therefore care who is changing them as long as it is done kindly and gently. So it’s different.
Exceptional cases where a baby has a history of abuse and might be instinctively frightened by any man are obviously different again. I would have thought it fairly likely that a mother in that situation would never let anyone else care for her baby out of her sight ever again, so the question probably wouldn’t even arise.

Well, I tell my children to approach a woman with young children too, because they're strangers and it's a reasonable statistical assumption to make. And they are likely to be sympathetic and helpful due to having current experience with young children.

But in a nursery setting where workers are supervised and checked, then it's not the same thing as a lost child approaching a stranger.

I‘d prefer to always have 2 coworkers present, ideally one always being a woman. But I accepted policies were not that strict where my DC was. No issues.

I think your way of dealing with it is the right one however it might be worth asking whether there are any specific reasons the parents don't want a man doing the nappy changes. That way if there is a religious reason or history of abuse then they would have a chance to discuss it with you and you could decide whether it was reasonable to make an exception in that particular case.

I think this is what we will do. Is it reasonable to make exceptions for religion though? I know it's not the same, but we've had a family ask if their child could be prevented from playing with a child from what they described as a lower caste and we said that it wasn't something we could do. All requests not to have the men involved in intimate care have come from people from other cultures or religions (it may have been for past abuse but if it was they never shared that) and we've always said that we can't accommodate their request but again, perhaps we were wrong to do so! Although as I said before, none of the parents who made the request withdrew their children from the nursery so we've not excluded anyone because of this so far.

(Oh, and I did not even ask for what I secretly thought would be the ideal way to handle it).

Suggest that they Google the names Sophie Elms or Vanessa George.

Well, it is a fact that men are much more likely to sexually abuse children.
Not sure if a woman being present would make me feel better about it, since there's quite a few women who, while not predators themselves, make excuses for such men.

I suppose it is safe enough if there's like five adults present and everyone can see what is going on.

However, in a more traditionally built nursery, where toilets and changing room are not in a glass box, and where staff members are alone with the children, I might well feel different.

And obviously, what sort of person the female staff are would also make a difference.
Rural, remote places where the women are rape apologists and patriarchy handmaidens usually don't have any male nursery staff, but if, say, laws were changed so nurseries have to hire men, then those rural places would have a very high risk of hiring pedophiles (as the average man in such areas doesn't want to do the job) and they might only have two people working there at the same time anyway, et cetera.

It depends on many factors.

Question: Did parents ask that male members of staff not provide intimate care for their children before they put the children in your nursery, or after?

If parents asked for things to be changed after the child was already there for a while, I'd wonder why they didn't trust male staff anymore and if there might be a reason for this.

If before, they might have made the same calculations I did, or perhaps they just are sceptical about it as they aren't used to men changing babies' diapers - as you mention other cultures/religions.