Hal, may I suggest that the next time you have the other family over, you rent ‘Daddy Daycare’?
Yes, seriously.
It’s not just teaching–most males don’t work pediatrics or OB, either. I can’t think of any(20 years of acute care, 3 hospitals) offhand, but there may be a very scattered few.
And many, many times, a female pt will refuse the insertion of a catheter by a male nurse–some won’t even let a male nurse put them on a bedpan (although these are more due to modesty issues).
If you think about what we teach kids about “Stranger Danger” (which should be Uncle Dale danger but I digress) and then think about the close physical contact a nurse has to have with a pt. Now make that a nurse who is an adult male and the pt a female child…no wonder men don’t go into those areas. OB is considered a specialty–there is better pay than general medical, but no male nurses.
I am sorry this is happening to you, Hal --this guy sounds way overprotective to me. I once had a few play dates with a woman who was not comfortable letting her kids out of her sight–I mean they had to be in the same room. This was fine when the kids were toddlers, but once they were in preschool–I found her anxiety to be inappropriate and stultifying. Very mild compared to the stuff you’re dealing with.
Do you think your wife hasn’t picked up on it because she tends to not be in the room when it happens? Does this guy try to control other things as well? Do you really need to see him often?
I’ve never figured out the whole NO GAY TEACHER thing either. It seems irrational to me (as well as pathetic, cruel and useless).
A patient’s individual choice is one thing, but system-wide ‘male-wary’ policy, like the chaperoning of male nurses with female patients, is on another level entirely.
Here’s an interesting article discussing the problems both gay and straight men face WRT teaching young children.
Interesting. I never thought about that. I had two pediatricians (both male). The first one we left because he scared me as a toddler (6’5 and looked like Elliot Gould with Brad Garrett’s voice), but he was a fine doc. My family physician after age 10 or so was also male.
That was supposed to have quoted eleanorigby’s post from above. Sigh.
See, this is just silly to me. I generally prefer male doctors because I’ve just had bad luck with female doctors being sorta bitchy (just from my experience, I’m sure there are oodles of wonderful female doctors), but the whole escort thing gets annoying. Thankfully I’m not modest and don’t mind a few medical folks in the room, but I can’t imagine if I were.
Like, after my car accident I had a giant mass of scar tissue in my lower abdomin (think above the crotch/stomach divide by like, an inch or so) and upon discovering said giant mass, I flipped and went to the doctor. I had to wait an extra half an hour because they had to wait for a female nurse to come in with the good doctor so he could look at. . . my stomach. My pants were still on, my tits were covered, there were no pink parts in sight. But, apparently, we were close enough to pink parts that my dear doctor needed an escort to protect me from his perverted ways. :rolleyes:
So yeah, that just irks me. I’m sure the policy is in place because enough harpies complained, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is totally silly. I figure, if a doctor wants to feel me up by rubbing the lump of scar tissue on my lower stomach, we’ve got bigger problems than the fact that he is trying to feel me up.
Heartfelt sympathy for your situation, Hal. Obviously, your wife’s friend’s husband has issues. I can’t divine from the scenarios you’ve presented exactly what those issues are, but I don’t blame you for feeling insulted and impugned. Do you suppose this guy would act differently if it were his one-year old son in your lap? I would be interested to know what your wife thinks once she takes a closer look.
When I was in college (alas, over 30 yrs ago) I wanted to be a children’s librarian and reading teacher, but I abandoned that ambition as I came to terms with my gay sexuality. I wanted a quiet, simple life. I did not want to defend my honor over and over again, as I imagined would be the case if I pursued my dream.
In my late twenties I dated a woman from work (I have a straight streak). When I walked her home, she would sometimes stop to talk to children playing in their front yards. I’m sure she never knew why I walked on ahead, nor why I never gave out candy on Halloween.
Right. I’ve been scrolling through this to find the Doper who said, "Maybe the guy’s wife was molested and he is reacting in the same way that Auntbeast[ said her husband does:
No, it doesn’t “clear it up” for me. I’m not stupid. What I AM is perplexed.
I understand prejudice. I hate it, but I understand that it exists.
What I DON’T understand is how, in this era of totally paranoid and off the chart PC stuff, we (and I am using the universal “we” here, as I am so NOT on this bandwagon) can allow such a double standard. It seems clear to me. If gay men are a risk to teach male children, then straight men are a risk to teach female children. Seems like a simple equation.
My guess would be that, in much the same way a humorist once defined a convervative as “a liberal who just got mugged,” some normally PC people become noticeably less so when their own children are at risk, or appear to be at risk.
Yes.
Well then, in THAT case? Everyone ought to be demanding that their children ought to be ONLY taught by teachers who are verified to be attracted to a different gender than the gender of their children.
Where have we lost the realization that being a pedophile has nothing, not even the slightest thing, to do with whatever gender a person is attracted to?
A pedophile is a sick person who preys on children. Their sexual preferences have nothing to do with it. Not one, single thing.
GAHH. It ticks me off.
My goodness, I have a reputation of reasonableness to uphold? How unfortunate.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this thread a fair amount and I’ve decided that most of what I said is probably because I don’t have children nor do I plan to have children. I guess it came from trying to reason through the need to try to protect kids from abuse.
Unfortunately, that protection also comes at a cost of lost experiences. I wouldn’t want to deny my kids the chance to go to sleep overs or Boy or Girl Scout camp, etc. but I’m afraid of the guilt that I’d feel if I ever discovered that one of my kids had been subject to some sort of abuse like that. I don’t think that only allowing my kids with, “people that I trust,” is a reasonable strategy because time and again we’ve learned that people cannot judge character. Very nice people have turned out to be child molesters and I don’t think that people have that much ability to pick out predators from day to day interaction.
It’s a difficult line to draw between reasonable and overprotective; I guess I’ll draw that line at not having kids 
Well, since most abuse is perpetrated by family or family friends, the only logical way to handle it is to only let your kid go on sleep overs with strangers!
Wait a minute, there’s a problem there somehow, I just know it…
I do know what you mean, and it is a very hard line to tread. Your previous post just seemed so far on the shrill panicked side that I was surprised. I’m not completely blindered to the possibility and over there in Pollyannaland either. It’s finding that middle path that is the challenge, as you seem to understand.
Watch out or you’ll get accused of being reasonable again! 
(parentheses added by author)
Chaperones are there to protect both parties. They protect the women from doctors who commit salacious acts during exams (and there are some that do) but also protect doctors from patients who could falsely accuse the doctor of inappropriate behavior.
In order to lose the realization, a person has to have it in the first place.
And in order to have it, a person would have to, y’know, read an actual book or perhaps an article or at minimum pay attention to the words and views of an actual expert in the field, as opposed to letting oneself be blinded by demagogues and manipulators and other people who derive their own personal power by playing up and inflaming the prejudices of the ignorant.
Realization is necessarily a rational process, at least in part, whereas prejudices are, by their nature, irrational, or, possibly more accurately, pre-rational. In other words, one has a gut-level negative feeling about something by which a class of people can be categorized (homosexuals, blacks, Republicans, scientists, professional athletes, Christians, computer nerds, whatever); one inflates that categorization in significance and defines the individuals solely by and as that category; one then con-flates the negative feeling about the category with the individuals who can be defined as having membership in the category; and finally one immunizes that feeling against any disproof or intellectual questioning, and raises the feeling to the level of unshakeable conviction. In short, one cannot be argued out of a belief one didn’t argue oneself into in the first place.
In this case, child molestation and homosexuality are both “disgusting” on a pre-rational gut level in the same way rotting meat or feces are disgusting; they are therefore emotionally equivalent; child molesters and homosexuals are thus emotionally equivalent; ergo one keep them from one’s children with the same vehemence with which one would prevent said children from playing with rotting meat or feces. It’s idiotic, but insofar as there’s any kind of thought process at all going on here, that’s what it looks like.
I really have no way to respond to this except to say that women get accused of it too. I’ve been accused of molesting children no less than three separate times in my life - and I did no such thing.
The first time it wasn’t actually molestation, but consentual sex. His mother tried to have me tried on statutory rape charges, except that he was older than the statutory rape age (he was 17, I was 19 - age of consent here in NV is 16). Second time was a missing diaper that I was looking for to change baby with when Daddy walked in.
This third time was a little more scary. My friend has a five (almost six) year old who I absolutely adore. I’m “her Tasha,” and I’m kinda like that close family friend who gets called Aunt or Uncle but isn’t actually either. I love this little girl to death. She’s smart, funny, and just all-around an awsome kid. Her mom will let her spend the night at my house with myself and the Tashaboy just because she has that much fun at our house (we have tea parties and watch the Little Mermaid, mostly). Anyway, one day she was scratching at what I’ll term “down there,” which says to me that she’s sweaty and needs a bath or to at least clean down there. I keep baby wipes in the house for a myriad of reasons, so I handed her some and told her to clean up down there, not too hard, and put her in the bathroom, door closed (while being nude at that age isn’t really a huge deal, I’m not particularly comfortable being around ANYONE’S privates other than mine and the Tashaboy’s - plus, she should learn to take care of herself down there while she’s less modest anyway). When she was done she walked out, all better, and didn’t scratch the rest of the night. I told her mother about it, and she said cool, she’d been noticing that but didn’t know what was causing it.
Apparently GRANDMA thought this was a HUGE DEAL and showed up at my house FREAKING OUT because I’d somehow taught the five-year-old how to touch herself. Nevermind that I was teaching her proper hygene (gee, grandma, you wonder why you’ve never had an orgasm? Probably because you never cleaned yourself and now have nerve damage from infections) and left the room and closed the door while she was naked. Nope. I was a child molester. Anyway, she spend the better part of a month trying to convince Friend to press molestation charges against me, and then filed a police report herself - after the mother and I explained to the police officer what happened, separately, charges were dropped. But holy shit was that scary.
Men probably get it more often, but I’ve gotten it three times within three years, and I’m female. I’m just going to say that people are overly paranoid. Yes, there are big scary people out there, and yes, they are going to want to hurt your child, but overprotecting them isn’t giving them that much of a life to live. Keeping your child locked up in your house with you isn’t letting them live or have fun, which is what childhood is all about. Teach them about stranger danger, and teach them about how people touching them down there if it’s not in a medical setting is wrong, but don’t lock them up or keep them from people in the same room as you.
As to the OP (since this is a long almost-rant and I need to wind it up), I’m going to go with what someone else has said - Maybe the dad doesn’t want her replacing him with you since he’s not there a lot? My dad was military and he acted the same way around us, and he certainly wasn’t molesting us, nor did he know anyone (barring his ex stepfather, who he hated) who had been molested or raped.
~Tasha
Holy shit, Tashabot, what a scary experience.
What sometimes scares me is that people do trust me to be alone with their small children sometimes. Not that I’d do anything bad to them, of course, but I’m always afraid I’d break them somehow. And of course I’ve built up a fair amount of paranoia about being accused of anything. Last summer I was left alone, in spite of my protests, with a 5-year-old boy who is not even related to me (sort of). We were left completely alone in a room of hard cement and deep water, for a couple of hours. As it turns out, the kid has become an excellent swimmer, so that was one less worry. And soon we were joined by a man and his little boy (strangers to me). It made me feel much better that there was a bona fide dad in the room, who might actually remember the number for 911 should anything happen.
I would consider this to be a reasonable interpretation. Maybe he just doesn’t want his girl calling anyone else daddy. There might be a whole insecurity thing around that.
See, the attitude of which you speak is the reason, pure and in itself, why I chose not to report my rape. Yes, it was a moderately heinous experience (although it’s no higher than number three on my personal chart o’ misfortunte - and probably sub-number 5 in all reality), but I just knew if I reported it I’d be relegated to helpless victimhood. As I’m neither helpless nor a victim, I couldn’t face the prospect.
The only thing that bothers me about my decision (some 10 years later) is the near-certainty he’s done it again to someone else. I know who he is. However, the circumstances were such that prosecuting him wouldn’t have been a slam-dunk conviction and the whole process would have been a lot harder on me than on him. He-said, she-said and all that.
I chose my mental health over the possible safety of a stranger. This makes me selfish - which I don’t care for. Having a hundred caring and concerned souls eyeing me waiting for the inevitable breakdown accompanied by fear of men and inability to have a loving normal relationship would have been a self-fulfilling prophecy in my world.
I’m not saying my choice would have been right for everyone, but it was the right choice for me.
Very scary. I love babies and little kids, always have. Love babysitting them, love playing with them, can’t wait to have my own. I’m also an adult male. I think I need to stop following this thread, because it’s getting me a little freaked out about being accused of something someday. 