WHEN my children were very young and one of the childminders I used was a man, I was surprised to receive comments from other parents which suggested they would feel uncomfortable about employing a male themselves. “I just couldn’t trust a man,” one friend said. “I’d feel too worried.”
Men didn't feature much in the nursery, babysitting or early years of most children, unless the man was their father.
It was the same picture throughout my children's early years. When they started school there were only two male teachers in their primary, one of whom was the head teacher, who rapidly disappeared off to do something important in overseeing how other schools were run. The female deputy head acted up for a while, then eventually a new head teacher came along, also male. But year after year, my boys were being taught by women. It has always struck me that this doesn’t send a good message to children, either about the place of women in the world, or of men.
So, when Scottish Education Minister Shirley Anne Somerville last week announced a drive to get more men into primary education and early years work, I applauded. Only one in 10 primary school teachers is male; in nursery care there are yet fewer men (one in 20). What I see out there, in my own children’s world, is a monoculture in which few men are to be found. Even as fathers are becoming increasingly hands on, in the professional worlds of childcare and teaching, a firm message is being delivered to children – that looking after the young is the job of women, not men.
Since our culture still values male professions more than women’s, we're also signalling that this job isn't that important – the raising of the next generation is too small an issue for men to involve themselves in.
Somerville launched the drive as part of an attempt to counter the current shortage of primary school teachers, and the predicted need for early-years workers when the SNP Government roll out their plans to extend free childcare. Of course, it’s not necessary that men be targeted in order to meet this shortage – all that’s needed is more people, whatever the gender.
But the fact that there are so very few men in primary and early years education seems increasingly anachronistic, and the situation is fuelled by gender stereotypes. Women are more caring and nurturing. Men are more likely to be paedophiles. The latter may statistically be true but, given the tiny actual percentage of men guilty of such acts, that a whole gender should be tarred with that brush suggests moral panic. Yes, we need to create systems that protect children, but we also need to develop a culture in which the natural urge many men have to care for children is encouraged rather than discouraged.
Many parents, of course, do want to see more men working in early years. A 2011 survey found that 98 per cent of parents were in favour of men caring for three to five-year-olds. Yet, still there is the occasional loud voice of disapproval. Last year, Tory minister Andrea Leadsom made the inflammatory declaration that she thought it not “sensible” to leave a child in the care of a male nanny.
Meanwhile, the problem isn't just that men working in early years are viewed with suspicion, it’s that the sector is simply not attracting many men. In Scotland, some excellent campaigners are trying to change things – for instance Kenny Spence, the founder of Men In Childcare, runs a scheme to fund and encourage more men to train in early years care. But progress is slow. In Norway the number of male childcare workers has risen from 3 per cent in 1991, to 10 per cent in 2011, with a target now of 20 per cent.
What I find most dispiriting about the lack of men in children’s earlier years, is the story it tells about what’s important in our culture and what is not. That our education system is so gender-stratified, is a microcosmic lesson in how wider society works. Teaching, once a chiefly male profession, has become devalued and disrespected since women entered the workforce at a time when education was one of the few career options open to them. In primaries, where men do appear, it’s often at the top of the tree, as heads.
Meanwhile, though everyone knows the early years are key in laying the bedrock for future lives and society, pay and attitudes don't reflect that. Partly, I suspect, that's because this work has been done, unpaid, by women for centuries. Anything women used to do for nothing is undervalued.
This needs to change if we want to draw more men in. Men will be lured by the same factors that will attract more women – greater status and respect for the profession, more financial reward, better working conditions. We need to pay more than lip service to how important this job is.
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