Childminder vs Nursery

[Sml]

Lil, I was just joking, because I am certainly not afraid of driving with my husband! As I just said below, I think anybody is justified in not taking a risk if they feel it's statistically too great.

Tigger - I don't say that male nurses or doctors are less good than female ones. My preference for a female doctor/nurse for myself has nothing to do with the quality of the care offered.
As for care for my children, I or someone else is always present when they go to the surgery anyway, so of course I wouldn't refuse an eye exam by a male nurse.

Hello, I am Finnish and cannot understand this discussion at all. At home, and in the rest of Scandinavia, a 50/50 split between men and women in nurseries for young children is not at all unusual. There is no issue of sexual abuse by these male carers whatsoever.

Tinna - your experience is very typical of people from scandinavia - the attitudes of the Brits are bizzare to most people I've met from over there.

Tigger - I've tried to find some, and found no real stats on abuse by men working in childcare - I'm still waiting for SML to come up with some, but it looks like she's had no luck either. As Tigger says, in countries where there is a 50/50 split in childcare staff, this isn't an issue, so maybe we can learn from that?

Sorry - I meant "as Tinna says", not "as Tigger says", obviously!

Thank you very much darling!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi - just joined this discussion and will add my thoughts if everyone is not sick of it.

Just a few basic points.

Kids are most likely to be abused by someone they know. This makes the statement of not putting someone into childcare with a male meaningless. There are risks wherever your child is. Should we just put kids into quaranntine and only allow them near certain people?

Who would those people be anyway. As Tom points out mothers are more violent towards their kids than fathers.

What is worse anyway - child abuse or violence? In some societies incest is tolerated. OK I know that incest and abuse are different things but how do we know what goes on in a child's mind. Sometimes young girls initiate sexual contact and they confuse sex and love. There is a positive aspect to sex of course. Not that I am advocating under-age sex but we need to get things into proportion. The whole hysteria towards abuse rubs off on kids. I read an article about a father who fell out with his daughter aged about 10. It was around the time of the introduction of Childline. To get back at him she phoned Childline and told them she was being abused. The father was arrested and totally humiliated. She later retracted the statement and the father said he felt that something was destroyed in their relationship.

The trouble with viewing men as potential child abusers is that it can become a self fullfilling prophesy. What incentive is there for men to "behave themselves" if this is the attitude towards them.

A comment from my husband (an anthropologist) "women socialise men" - ie women largely bring up men so on this basis they contribute towards how adult men behave and this applies to the bad things they do as well as the good things. How many times have we heard that murderers have had strange experiences with their mothers? We are all responsible for what happens to our children in their upbringing.

The assumption is that women don't do bad things to their kids. Remember death of the 9 year old girl a few months ago? Her mother was let into the country with a false passport. No-one checked it properly because she was a woman. More women injure their children in Munchausen's by Proxy.

I find the attitude that men are guilty unless proven innocent deeply depressing.

Just had a bit more time to read the posts.

It is nearly impossible to prove a negative so trying to prove that men don't abuse in childcare is ridiculous. Sml speaks about more checks of childminders. Again this assumes that one is "guilty" and has to prove innocence. I agree that references are required for any type of job but how exactly can one prove that one isn't a child abuser?

We would be furious if we had to prove that we weren't going to do things in our work like steal money for example.

The police checks etc are all very well but that only works when the person is a registered child abuser. What about those who either haven't been caught or who have not yet offended. Yes there is a tiny risk that a man may be a child abuser but presumably in a nursery children are rarely left alone with one person (male or female). Your child is more likely to be abused by Uncle Bob when Auntie Flo nips down to the shops and then possibly treated cruelly by Auntie Flo when she returns. It is more likely that abuse won't be discovered when it is a relative because the child is often afraid to hurt feelings and knows that the relative is always going to be there. In this case a nursery would be a safer place. At the end of the day we all take risks in our lives. We don't stop driving cars even though the risks of having an horrendous accident are quite high.

Also Sml - it is interesting that you portray the choice of what you'd prefer to happen to your child between raping and smacking ie you state the worst case scenario of sexual abuse along with the least harmful of violence. What about the choice between a mild form of abuse like touching and having broken bones? I am not saying that there is 'good' aspects of abuse but it is on a continuum just the same as violence.

You may be interested to know that the Equal Opportunities Commission is looking at these issues. Their mission statement is not just about women in work, it is about "women and men at home and at work". The Chief Exec of EOC, Julie Mellor, argues that the exclusion of men from childcare, both by direct prejudice against those men who try it and by teaching our children that only women do childcare, is the flip side of the exclusion of women from the workplace. You cannot solve one problem without solving the other. So this is not a women versus men issue at all (as this discussion demonstrates to an extraordinary extent). The prejuduce against men in childcare rebounds on both men and women and everyone loses.

What is really depressing about the prejudice against men in childcare is that it focuses on those men that are the most courageous and determined. Men in childcare know what people think and it must be SO HARD to take - ridiculed by many for losing their “masculinity” and suspected of the worst of all possible sins by others. Things are actually going backwards, with less and less men in what is already the most gender stereotyped of all professions. I regard these men to be as courageous and determined as the women who first pioneered the rights of women outside the home. I am sure that men in childcare have to be absolutely brilliant at it in order to survive in the profession – just as women often have to be better at their jobs than men in order to compete for the same positions in the workplace.

The Sheffield Children's Centre has a policy of 50/50 men/women staff and they do careful training to ensure staff do not inadvertantly exclude men who are clients. (How many times have I gone to the doctor with my wife and child and been treated as if I were not there? At Sheffield, they videoed this sort of thing and use this in the training.) The Sheffield centre does not have an easy time of it – there are lots of people who have strong objections to including men in “female territory”.

The Sheffield Children’s Centre is thinking of organising a national conference on this issue, jointly with Fathers Direct. Perhaps we should organise some kind of on-line live discussion with Mumsnet! We could get some men in the profession to tell their own stories.

As you say Duncan a lot of people have objections to men being in a "female territory". This is what most of the general public think, a lot of the women on this site have jobs that they are the smaller percentage of the 2 sexes. Lil, is in engineering and she said on another board here that the females were the smaller % of the students in her year, why? I farm with my husband and do you know what gets right up my left nostril, men who think I do not know what is going on on our farm or anything to do with the paperwork, if they call they ask for Mr...... and when I say I can help they say "it's alright I'll phone back later", that really pisses me off. I feel like I should sprout facial hair, fart on demand and scratch my groin all the time to get through to these people!. I think what the Sheffield centre is doing is excellent, but you have to change the ways of many people in Britain before equality can really kick in.

Also for anyone to work in Childcare they must have the necessary documentation and certificates before they can get employment. I do not regard telling our children about any form of abuse as "hysteria", does that include telling then not to speak to strangers, taking sweets from strangers, getting into the car with strangers, as mother of 2 children I most certainly do not regard that as hysteria, quite the contrary I would call it common sense and being a responsible adult.

Tigger - by hysteria I meant the trashy press propaganda who say that there are dirty old men on every street corner. One example was the outcry about naming paedophiles. One man who was a paediatrician was even targetted! This shows how stupid some people can be and how willing some people are to hate men even with the minimum of factual information.

Yes be sensible - all those things you mentioned about taking sweets from strangers etc can equally apply to women. More women tend to kidnap babies for example.

Eulalia, you are right concerning some people attitudes, but, at the same time why should the victims be "splashed" all over the press and the attackers get treated with annonimity. A prime example of showing decorum was Sarah Payne's parents, the dignity they have showed throughout their ordeal has been very dignified, more than I think most people would have done. I do think that people who commit offences towards women and children should be known, they should not be allowed to hide from the rest of society, why should they, they have ruined many families lives these people will never be the same again, so why do these vermin and I mean vermin, I could say stronger but I won't not here. Get safe housed, new idenities etc when they get out of prison. We had a case of this about 2 years ago in our area, and the man was living near to one of our bigger villages, in a caravan, he was moved very quickly to another area near us and eventually disappeared altogether. I do not agree with mob rule, there are other ways to prove a point. When they do go to Prison, they are living in great accommodation, Carstairs is the most secure unit in Scotland, and their cells are better equipped than most motorway hotels, why?, they are also kept away from the other prisoners, because they fear for their lives, must make them think about what their victims suffered at their hands.

Thank god for Snowy, I've been away and was trying to catch up with this thread but lost the will to live! I can't be bothered to read the whole of the last week's worth of ranting and raving but it seems to me as though people have gone mad. Sorry it's lazy of me not to read all the ins and outs but I just wanted to add my voice to those saying that they want their children to grow up with a balanced view of men and women in all aspects of life. I find it abhorrent to think that all teachers, not just men have to be careful not to touch children in their care in case it can be used against them. I hope that when my daughter goes to nursery there will be male carers there but I doubt there will.

Duncan, yes please to your idea about a Sheffield Centre / Mumsnet / Fathers Direct link-up. I think what the centre is doing is fantastic (I recently read a profile of one of the male workers there who used to be a steelworker until he was made redundant) and wish there were more places like it. I am definitely one of the mums who wants her son to grow up seeing childcare and education as areas where men can get involved professionally in precisely the same way as women, ie after appropriate training and vetting.

ditto to Marina's comments for me

ditto!

Eulalia - of course I'd rather my child had a broken bone. It would be far more likely to be obvious that the child needed to be removed from that environment quickly, and far more likely that the perpetrator would be punished. A "mild" form of sexual abuse like touching could go on undetected for years, which in the long run would have far more damage to the children.
"Kids are more likely to be abused by someone they know" - do you include someone who is in loco parentis every day, ie a child carer?
By the way, I have watched all my children's carers carefully for signs of Munchausen's syndrome as well, eg a tendency to dramatise themselves. I'm probably more paranoid than most on that subject as I have been the victim of a sufferer from this syndrome (I think - she has never been diagnosed, but her weird behaviour fits the description very well).

With regard to Marina's comment, I repeat again that I too want to see more male primary school teachers, and deplore the feminisation of education.

Tom - unlike you, it is not my job to come up with these sort of statistics! sorry if this seems like a cop out to you. I think they would be fiendishly difficult to find, due to the tiny numbers of male child carers in most countries, and different attitudes towards reporting child abuse cases to the police and in the newspapers in different countries. I will just add that 25 years ago, no one thought that child abuse was an issue in the UK either, but now we know otherwise. And if you think it is "ranting and raving" to say that this knowledge will affect my judgements about who looks after my toddlers, then I think you're ignoring the fact that every time women don't go out at night or don't walk down a dark alley, they are making assumptions about the possible behaviour of the men they might meet. We just take this for granted, so why do people have such a problem with making a similar decision on behalf of their children? I guess it is because in this case, our fears also affect the freedom of men to be child carers. Well, decent, honest men who want to be child carers are also the victims of the wicked few who abuse children, and I do sympathise with them. But, if it was my child who was abused, it wouldn't be much consolation to me to think "At least I never practised sexual discrimination against a child carer."

Sml, I'm not sure of the wisdom of starting this up again but just to say that you are persistently confusing judgement about the potential behaviour of strangers with that of trained childcare professionals who work alogside other professionals and who would have limited opportunity to indulge in abuse. Not accepting a lift from a strange man is very different from denying a man a job solely on the basis of his sex even though in all respects he may be better qualified for the position than a female counterpart. Surely its all about denying other people rights and equality based on their sex?

When I employed our Nanny, I independently got copies of her certificates from her colleges, I spoke with all her referees and cross-checked the details of the children she looked after, the dates and the reasons for leaving. I also got independepent confirmation of the identity of her referees. I wouldn't consider a nursery that didn't do the same for all its staff.

I am bit confused about the lack of statistics on men in childcare. Last time I looked, Scandinavia had a combined population of around 35 million people. By all accounts, men play a very active role in childcare there for the under 5's. Isn't it a reasonable assumption that if there are no statistics available from those countries, it is because there isn't a problem?. They are of course amongst the more open countries of any.

Croppy, they're strangers to me. And when I went back to work after being ill and off the job market for 6 years, I successfully concealed the fact that I had been ill on my CV, and all the stuff I put down was checkable with the people concerned. I couldn't have been caught out telling lies. So I know how easy it is to fake a CV and references, and I don't trust somebody else to make those checks for me.

Re Scandinavia, I meant that I don't know how much child abuse is reported in those countries, as it wasn't reported here until relatively recently. And what sticks in my head as well is that in the cases of the two people I mentioned earlier, who I personally know and who were abused as children, in neither case was the abuser even reported to the police, although in one case, he would have gone to prison for a very long time if convicted. So I know how unreliable those statistics are.

I don't understand how an absence of 6 years could be concealed unless the referees provided were told to lie. Careful cross checking of stories from the carer and the family/employer concerned should reveal inconsistencies.

Isn't a bit strange to describe the carers of your child as "strangers"?. All my friends with children in nurseries get to know the staff very well (as an aside, had a phone call this morning from a friend who is delighted to have finally found a nusrsery not entirely staffed by WASP women).

Out of interest, what was the relationship of the perpetrators of abuse to their victims in your friends' cases?

I want to bring up my 2 little boys to have a well balanced view of the world, to be open and affectionate and not to be beset by superstition and mistrust. I consider positive male role models in early education a necessity. The chances of a male carer carrying out sex abuse in a well run nursery where colleagues are rarely left alone is so minute that I would quite frankly rather risk it than imbibe in them a twisted view of men overall.

Croppy,
I never actually asked anyone to lie, but if I had of course it would have made it even easier.

One was the father of a best friend at school and the other was someone in a position where he was trusted with children. Can't be more specific than that, even anonymously. I think that people abused by members of their own family would be even more reluctant to talk about it though, so one wouldn't know about it, even if it was more common.

It's stating the obvious:There's been an awful lot of theorising in this discussion.

Its been really interesting. But as far as I'm concerned my thinking is at slightly at odds my reality. Like others on this site, I believe we've got to show our sons that men can take on professional caring roles and that with effective nursery checks in place, there shouldn't be sexual discrimination between male and female child care professionals. But I have still expressed some concern about male carers.

Yet my reality is this. On Friday,my male partner picked up our son from primary school, where he had spent a happy day with his male teacher. My male partner then went to collect our toddler son from my childminder's male partner. No problems to report there either. I arrived home, having spent another day at work as the main family breadwinner, to be greeted by a roomful of men and boys. All perfectly contented as usual, and just getting on with it.

SML - I do think it's a bit of a cop out - you say you are basing your opinion on statistics, but seem unwilling to back them up. Saying that, I have found the stats hard to find myself - even from countries which have high levels of men working in childcare. It suggests to me that it isn't considered a problem - if it was, there would almost certainly be some research on it. But, as Tinna says in her post, where this is the case, it simply isn't seen as an issue.

I do respect your right to make decisions about your own children, of course. I also wonder if your opinion has been at all affected by this discussion and the views expressed here?

actually, the statistic I am basing my decision on (I don't have any opinions about individuals) is the (small) number of men convicted in the UK for child abuse, who were able to carry out their offences because their work allowed them privileged access to children, and the inference is that male childminders would reflect this %.

I haven't seen any arguments here to make me change my mind; all the arguments advanced in favour of men working in nurseries are perfectly true, but my own experience of life inclines me to give a slightly higher importance to the risks to my children than most other people here are apparently willing to do.

I just spent my lunch hour doing a press search on the UK for the last 8 years. I know this has severe limitations but it throws up 7 successful convictions against female nursery workers for physical violence to charges. Can only find one case of sex abuse by a male of children under 5 where the perpetrator was not a family member and where the children were entrusted to his care.

You say that none of the arguments here have made you change your mind, Sml. So I take it that you are fully convinced that the risks are too great for you or your children to be alone with a strange male, be he doctor, dentist or nursery worker. That's your decision.

I don't know if you have a son, but supposing you do, would you feel ok when he grows up about encouraging him to become a doctor, dentist or nursery worker, if that's what he was interested in? And how would you feel about him reading your views in this discussion?