I don’t get this, I really really don’t. I’m reminded of the thread a while ago asking men if it bothered us that we’re presumed all to be paedophiles and so many people in that thread claimed such thinking was absurd. Then I see comments like this and it makes me think it is in fact it’s not so ridiculous after all.
Or indeed by another parent, since a significant number (I’m not sure but it may even be the majority) of child molestation cases are perpetrated by the parents of the child in question.
Our pastor’s teenaged son babysat for us 2 days/week this summer, and I hope he’ll be available this summer, too. He’s a great kid, and cheaper than adults or college students. And he takes goofy pictures of my toddler.
It’s creepy. Not men changing diapers, but that one would assume that a man might do something untoward because he has access to baby genitals. It reminds me of a thread that we have a long, long time ago where the OP was creeped out that a 5 year old girl changed her brother (who was 2 or 3) because they were opposite sex kids and too close in age for that to be appropriate. I just don’t see anything sexual about changing a dirty diaper.
My uncle (who has a thing for bathroom humor-and mooning people), once teased me that he used to change my diapers. (If you knew my uncle, you’d know he meant nothing sexual about it, duh). I just shot back, “Yeah, just don’t ask me to change your’s someday.”
Wasn’t there a thread about a guy who took his four-year-old daughter into the men’s room with him because he didn’t feel she was old enough to go into the women’s by herself and was scolded for it by a woman when he came out? And most dopers I believe agreed with him.
(As for the sister changing her brother’s diaper, I find it more inappropriate that a five-year-old is changing diapers all by herself. Isn’t she a little young for that?)
Apparently she did it a lot and was used to it. If anything was inappropriate about it, I’d think it would be the being too young part, but apparently she did a good job of it. The OP in that situation was definitely focused on the fact that it was two opposite sex siblings, though.
Exactly. Statistically speaking, the most dangerous people to leave my daughter alone with would be my husband, my dad or my brothers. Fuck statistics; I’m going to treat people better than that. My decision will be based on my judgement of them as a person, not their possession of a penis.
(And you can babysit for me any time. No pub crawls and no tattoos, though!)
One of my nephews regularly supplements his pocket money by babysitting, shoveling snow and lawn mowing, although now that he’s turned 16 that might change. He’s always been great with babies and kids, was taking care of his infant half-sibling when he was just a little guy himself.
I’m a single parent, so childcare was my largest expense until he finally matured enough to not need supervision. I’d not only hire a male, I actively looked for them since my son needed more male interaction.
When my first-born was 6 weeks old, I went to a new moms’ group at the hospital where she was born. The nurse who ran it cautioned us against hiring male babysitters because of the risk of molestation. The moms in the group were kind of surprised by this—we all had male partners. AND, statistics show that most abuse happens by someone known to the child. By that logic, we should all be afraid to leave our kids with our partners, right?
When the same child was 1 year old (she is 6 now), her daycare center hired a male to work in the infant room. This center always announced new teachers with a letter home. When this male started, so did 2 females. The letter introduced the females with saying the places they had worked, the education they had, etc. The write-up about the male started with, “Kevin comes to us with very great references from past childcare positions…”
My kids have had some great male gym teachers. I would certainly hire them.
Here’s the thread about that. The other dopers didn’t think it was too much responsibility. But the OP thought that the girl was too old to change the diaper of a boy who was so close to her in age…and I thought it was creepy that anyone would see this as a sex thing.
That’s good to know-but I would think it might be a little hard to do by herself-just lifting the kid and all that. Now helping-that would be a good idea. My sister was born when I was about six, almost seven-and I would have hated having to help change diapers at that age.
My son has only had a couple babysitters in his life. He is five. Most of the time my mother watches him if we need a sitter. But my nephew who is 15, has watched him a couple of times, and he is a great sitter. He loves to play all the boy games and get down on the floor and all that. My 44 year old out of shape bod can’t handle that stuff anymore, so it is nice to have him around.
The first time my nephew helped me out, my son was 2 months old, and the nephew was about 11. I did have my 20 year old niece around to help if he needed her to. She changed the diapers…he gave the bottles. He is a very responsible kid.
I also had a very good male friend, who was a fellow server at a bar/rest. where I was a manager. He and I had both been nannies…well he was a “Mannie”, in the past. He also worked at a daycare for a few years. A lot of the mothers of sons in particular loved him. I will have to say he was the most effeminate heterosexual I have ever known. Not sure what that means, but maybe something. ??
I was 4 when my baby brother was born in 1969…I changed his diapers quite a few times, and watched him alone in the house when I was 5 and he was 1, for as much as an hour or two alone. At that time it never seemed odd…now it does.
My mom worked, my four older siblings were all in school, and my dad was a farmer who would be in the barn, or in the field now and then, and have to leave us alone. I also changed his diapers during the safety pin era, and only remember stabbing him once. We all survived.
Guin, yeah, I wouldn’t have been up for changing diapers either, and I don’t think my parents would have wanted me to. But not because of the “Eww, you’re touching genitals” factor, more because I was a little kid and my parents took care of that sort of thing on their own. I don’t think that thought would’ve crossed their minds.
My brother used to help babysit his friends’ younger siblings while in high school (late 90s, early 00s) and still co-watches his girlfriend’s twin sisters on occasion. The girls are old enough not to be closely watched, but still can’t spend the night alone by state law.
Though striking the child is unacceptable, what’s at all wrong with raising your voice? Do you mean screaming and cursing at the child because he’s not behaving? That’d be an issue, but sometimes the best way to get a child to do his homework or go to bed or whatever is a friendly but firm <naaaaaaame>! I’d call that “raising your voice” but maybe our definitions are different.
My first choice would be a male because in my experience women are more “motherly” (with notable exceptions) but males are more friendly and playful while still being responsible and getting what needs to be done done. Women can be great, but they tend not to go past saying “do whatever you want” and only intervening at bedtime/suppertime/homework time or coddling them when they cry. Males, again, in my experience, are more likely to play with the child and even help them understand their homework rather than just letting them run amok until the schedule says run amok time is over. When I babysit I’ve played with barbies just to entertain a kid, and I find it goes a long way towards getting them to actually listen to you when it’s time to be serious, and when they get frustrated on homework I’ve found males are more likely to either help out or make homework fun in some way. And indeed, when I was a kid my male babysitters did all kinda of fun stuff outside and inside with me while the females were more laissez-faire in their style, and they generally were just boring or would talk on the phone and ignore me unless I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to.
Women also seem to have more of a fear of “what will people think?” Males (well, the type that will willingly babysit at least) only really have that when friends are around, when alone they’ll do just about anything (well… anything reasonably safe).
But babysitting is definitely more female-dominated. I’ve actually taken a Red Cross babysitting course and out of something like 40 people I was the only guy in the room (I took the course because I wanted to know how to Heimlich an infant and such just in case). I’ve never babysat outside people that know me personally though, I really do think there’s more of a stigma towards girls when hiring anonymously.
Don’t get me wrong though, it’s just first choice, I’m not abject to having women babysit at all. In fact, the only person in my family more naturally good with kids than me is probably my aunt who does it for a living. (And trust me, I’m naturally good to the point where if a kid likes someone in my family more than me it’s grounds for bragging rights)
My mom didn’t leave us alone with male relatives because she was molested by one of hers. She assessed the character of the male babysitters they had and they seemed OK, and then I was touched inappropriately. Therefore I wouldn’t leave my (hypothetical) kid alone with a male babysitter. We can’t help but be colored by our own experience. ETA: And, honestly, I know this is my own irrational bias. I wouldn’t judge anyone else for hiring a male babysitter and I know the chances are overwhelmingly good that nothing would happen.
As far as the question of a male vs. female day care teacher, I would assume there is more oversight over teachers where it would be harder for them to hurt kids, so this wouldn’t make a difference to me.
I had two male babysitters, brothers, as a kid. They babysat for me and my younger brother for a longer length of time than anyone else. I fancied the older one. The younger one used to talk to me about indie a lot.
My brother took over babysitting duties from me for some neighbours of ours, but in general doesn’t do much at all in comparasion to what I did. It’s weird - it’s an easy and often fun way to earn some cash, but he’s never been at all inclined to look for babysitting work, though I would guess a lot of people’d be reluctant to hire him.
We all survived.