"Should all men be treated as potential pedophiles?"

You're joking right?

I am a firm believer that God has given mothers an early warning system. That feeling in the pit of your stomach. We have all had it. For some reason you just feel uneasy about a person. You have no evidence of anything amiss but you just don't get a good vibe. Then on the otherhand you can be around other people and feel completely at peace with them.

We never used boys as baby sitters and were very picky about the girls we would use. I have had a male family member that I didn't want my children around and other males that are wonderful and I feel fine with.

Trust your gut!

Linda
Musings of a Domestic Goddess

We had a female babysitter before our current male sitter, and I was uneasy about her. Our new sitter makes my 'gut' feel better. He lives across the street and we know his entire family very well, whereas we didn't know hers except to talk on the phone.

Though the statistics are scary, I think we all have to make judgement calls made on people, situations and personalities, not gender. To say you refuse to hire someone to watch your children because they are male is extreme in MY opinion, but as parents of little people we want to protect, we retain that right to make those decisions, and I think Kathrynn has every right to make her decisions for her family, based on her comfort level.

It's no different than choosing to breastfeed or bottle-feed, or to put your child in pre-school or not. These decisions are as individual as any family, and I think to keep making people feel bad about making family decisions that essentially are very personal, is counter-productive. We know our own families best, and what works for one may not work for another. We ought to support other moms, even when our opinions don't mesh.

Karen

--
Troll Baby

Motherless

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Karen, you're right -- every family as a team and every person as an individual has the right to make these decisions. No question about that. I am glad Kathryn took her concerns up with the management at her gym -- that showed that she was serious about her convictions.

What I'm curious about is the idea that we (you, me, Kathryn) can choose to accept one statistic while choosing to ignore another because one is easier to accept. It might be easier to think that a random teenage boy is perverted enough to touch your child in an inappropriate manner. It is more difficult to imagine your teenage nephew doing it.

The idea that we treat all men as potential pedophiles certainly is shocking. Of course it is. And yet, isn't that what we're doing when we make a decision about whether or not we let our children be alone with an individual based on his gender?

Mary
BlogHer Contributing Editor, Mommy & Family
Mom Writes

Thanks for the reminder that these are personal family decisions, decisions that may even change within a given family as need arises.

I was raised to look for the good in people. Now, as a mother, it is my job to look for the good and bad in people in an attempt to protect my children. That means that every person in my child's life should be considered as a possible glowing asset, a liability or somewhere in the middle. As parents, it's our job to evaluate the people our children are left alone with, which means we should be open to the fact that anyone could be a potential child molester.

If we are not open to that possibility, will we have a hard time when our son timidly broaches the fact that Aunt Jinny did something the other day that made him feel very uncomfortable? If we're not willing to accept the possibility that everyone contains endless potential for good as well as bad, we're not doing our job as parents.

We then choose whom to trust, arm our children with our love and with the tools they need to reduce their risk and support them as they encounter life.

The decision against using male caregivers (although if you read my post and the following comments, you'll find that we have made exceptions including several trusted family members) was made largely to save effort on my part. There will be no explaining to one mother that I just don't feel right using her son as a babysitter when I use some other male all the time. We were stewing about it, made the decision quickly and still mull it over, which was part of the reason I wrote that post, to learn from others' opinions and experiences. And I've learned a lot.

As to your exact wording, I don't feel that it's at all appropriate to "treat" anyone who is not a proven offender as a pedophile or child molester. I do however think it's right to take time to honestly consider that they might be.

A friend recently told me that following the guidelines for interviewing possible childcare professionals in Gavin De Becker's book Protecting the Gift, she crossed one preschool off her list of possibilities. The school came highly recommended by several of our friends.

One of the questions she asked was, "What action would you take if you suspected that one of the children in your preschool was being abused at home?"

The teacher answered that they carefully chose which families they allowed into the school and she was sure that would never happen.

If she would not entertain the idea that anyone in the families of any of her students could possibly be an abuser, how capable would she be of protecting the children within her school?

There's a lot to consider when we're talking about our children's safety.

As I sidenote - I think, like all statistics, these can be very misleading. Yes, family members have one of the highest percentages of offences. However, aren't children more likely to be in the care of family members than with strangers? I wonder if those percentages correlate.

Also, a large majority of childcare workers are female. If that's the case, what does it say about the statistic that roughly 95% of the offenses are still committed by males (this number varies from source to source), even though they are less likely to have direct supervisory contact with the children? Just food for thought.

If we make that decision based on statistics then not only is Mary right and family members would be the most suspect, but, women are nuts to marry men at all and allow them access to children. Fathers are often the perps. Therefore, it would really be best to be a lesbian separatist and not marry men at all, ever. If you don't trust men in general enough to let them babysit your kid, why the heck would you marry one?

-----------------
Liz Henry
lizzard@bookmaniac.net
Badgermama - personal & mommyblog
http://liz-henry.blogspot.com

I am completely in favor of encouraging the gym to move machines so they're facing the child care room and/or installing a live feed on one of the flat panel monitors. But encouraging them to only use female care-givers? That's discrimination. The gym would be exchanging one liability for another.

If someone is uncomfortable leaving their children with the "practically free" child care service at their local gym, wouldn't it make more sense to spend a little more money on child care with which they are comfortable? Instead of trying to change a policy that sends a message that penis owners are not to be trusted?

(I'm also aware of more than one man who lost his virginity at a young age to the 16-year old female babysitter...)

I Think About

"(I'm also aware of more than one man who lost his virginity at a young age to the 16-year old female babysitter...)"

EXACTLY!

I don't believe it's a gender thing necessarily, but a 'person' thing. Some people are trustworthy, and not others. I think the percentages are swayed by the fact that boys rarely tell Mom and Dad that they were molested by his female babysitter when in his mind, it wasn't molestation at all - but the same situation with the genders reversed is more often categorized as abuse.

Unfortunately, as parents, the best we can do is to be as informed and aware as possible, make the best choices we can, and trust our intuition about individuals with whom we trust (or don't) our children.

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Nova's Heart

Honestly, I have a hard time reading this discussion. There are two conflicting emotions here:

1. The idea that a group of theoritically liberated, forward thinking, want-things-to-change women like those here would be actually debating whether blatant, clear-cut, inarguable discrimination against men is OK or not blows my mind. Imagine the explosion of anger that would be happening if we reversed the gender in this discussion. It feels very much like yet another case of men=bad, women=good.

Let's be honest here - the question that's really being asked is simple: "Is discrimination acceptable in certain instances?" Which leads me to my second conflicting emotion...

2. The numbers are scary. I'll be honest, I'd think twice about a male babysitter because of the numbers, and the fear that we've gotta thrust upon us by the constant media attention.

But I believe that the bigger issue facing our kids is that we won't let them do anything at all because of our own fears and the fear that massive media coverage of everything you can imagine has baked into us. We won't let our kids play in the front yard, or down the street. We medicate the bejesus out of them, and we try to ensure that they're never upset because they weren't invited to every birthday party for every kid in the class. As Arianna Huffington said at the Day 2 keynote, "our own fears translate to our kids as a lack of trust" (paraphrasing, although closely)... and we're raising a generation of kids who fundamentally don't believe they're capable of taking risks and challenging themselves.

I'm sure the answer I'll get back from somebody is the highly dismissive "you just don't get it" (as I've been getting elsewhere this week), but hopefully this view adds to the discussion.

Oh, and for the record, I'm a man who doesn't have any kids... although will in about three months. Until recently I spent 5 years at a kids toy company, and had hands on with kids and research during that tenure.

What concerns me about the whole "no male babysitters" stance is whether it stops at just the babysitter.

What about when your kids go to school and have male teachers? What about when they get involved in after-school activities and have male coaches/activity leaders? What about when they want to sleep over a friend's house where there are male family members?

Jules

BlogHer Contributing Editor, Australia, New Zealand & Oceania
Jetsetting Jules

And since I have all girls, in theory I'd prefer to have female babysitters. My youngest is about 99% potty trained, but there is that 1%.

However, we don't know many teens. the ONLY teen my kids love and want to have babysit is their friend's older brother. So right now, if I was going to use a non-family-member as a babysitter, it would be a teenage boy. And one of the best family caregivers is my step-father, who statisticly wouldn't be a good choice.

In our family, the line is not male/female, it is well known and trusted vs not well known. period. And yes we have additional issues here (neurological, food allergy, etc), so FTMP it's all theoretical.

Rachel
A Gaggle of Girls
Rachel's Recipe Box

OK...I know that I'll be tarred and feathered for this response. No male babysitters! Is that discriminatory? Absolutely! Do I care? No.

I have had too many bad experiences in my life to trust a man alone with my child. Of course, their father is a different story. I know him intimately and his character.

The "motherly gut feeling".....It doesn't always work. If it did, we wouldn't have so many unsuspecting vitims.

The "oh we know him very well"...most molesters are very well-known and trusted...they are usually master manipulators. That is how they get to their prey.

The "Well what about teachers..etc"...teachers can abuse, but it's harder. They are usually background screened. Plus, they are usually not alone with one child. They are in classrooms with lots of children, other teachers are nearby, the children are older and can verbalize something that happens.

"what about family?".....that's where most of them are unfortunately. Uncles, cousins, and fathers top the list of perpetrators.

"are all men perpetrators?"...No. I know that they aren't. I feel bad to have to always have suspicion lurking about. But, I would rather be a suspicious, horribly un-PC, discriminatory person on this issue then ever have to regret something later.

I know....it's terrible....flog me with a wet noodle.

Terri

I am going to restate something that's been said a hundred times already, but I think it's the best answer...trust your gut. While men may be statistically more likely to sexually molest children, there are other forms of abuse that can be visited upon our children (although I don't actually have any myself) that need to be considered. Is one form of abuse worse than another and merit more concern? Not to mention I have had myself more than one female babysitter that was just plain bad (oh, the stories I could tell....)

Women, esspecially Mothers, have instincts to tell them when there is danger, and we need to not be blinded by media-fed fear and just follow them. Listen to your children as well. They will tell you when something is amiss, one way or another (psychiatrists say that radical behavior and mood changes, espcially in young children, can be an indication that all is not well).

Well, without oversteping boundires anymore, I think the real answer just comes down to trusting the people you have watch your children, male or female. In the case of the gym, do you trust the organization to hire good people? Ask if they do background checks on people they hire to work in the day care area. If you can't trust the organization to hire good people, then pay someone you do.

Yea

~S.

lately!

My first thought was of my favorite babysitter when I was 7: a high-school boy from the church youth group that my parents directed (not saying that a "church source" imparts any sort of immunity or protection; just that that's where we knew him from). And there was another one I just adored when I was 9, who (of course, being OLDER THAN ME) is grown now with grandchildren on the way. Other than that, my most favorite was a teen girl named Trella (never have met anyone else with that name!) who made awesome snickerdoodles and played the piano while we sang...good times. I also thought of my own babysitting years; I even worked a full summer as a "nanny" for one pair of very indulged girls. I drove them all over the county, to tutors and museums and lessons, and took them swimming...can I imagine putting my daughter into the car of a teenage driver or sending her TO THE POOL with a teenager? Ack, the thought gives me palpitations, because surely the kid would crash the car, or, while at the pool, be flirting with someone at the EXACT MOMENT that my child was drowning...but I have issues leaving her anywhere, so, that's MY pathology (she was a full 13 months old before I could bring myself to leave her in the church nursery while I attended the service).

My next thought was of the teenage boy who made national news a couple of years ago, when his toddler-age babysitting charge died, and the kid was basically railroaded into prison, convicted of killing the tot via "shaken baby syndrome." Evidence which surfaced later, showing the liklihood that the child had a severe virus, having been very ill for days prior, ultimately exonerated the boy, but by then he'd lost years of his childhood and was forever changed.

What sticks with me about that piece was the boy's parents, and their appeal to the viewing audience of a show they were featured on (20/20? Dateline?), begging parents of teens NOT to allow their teen children (male OR female) to babysit, due to potential liability and even, as evidenced in their case, criminal accusations.

After reading some of these comments, I thought how while I very well might have male babysitters for my daughter (some of her early daycare providers were male; it was a "family business," and the boys were in the family)--if I had a teenage son, I would NEVER want him babysitting anyone else's children! All it would take is one misrepresented comment, one false accusation, and that boy's life could be ruined.

I can't even imagine how very careful men today must be to avoid even the appearance of the appearance of impropriety. If your daughter has a friend over, and she falls and skins her knee while playing, do you dare hold her in your lap and comfort her? Or even a boy, for that matter? I distinctly remember when doctor's visits starting involving the ever-present female nurse there anytime the doctor is in the room, even if he's only examining your big toe. Sometimes, in therapy sessions, I've wondered how in the world the (male) therapist handles that very issue. I mean, we're in a private room with a "white noise" machine running...is he taping the sessions? If so, I don't know about it, but I can't imagine there not being some protection against false accusations in place.

I remember learning to swim at the YMCA as a kid, and parents were encouraged to *not* watch most of the lessons (the thinking, certainly correct in MY case, that kids would be less inhibited and a little "braver" without Mommy in view)...I wonder how many parents today would leave their children with that great young guy who taught me to swim all those years ago?

Come to think of it, I don't believe I want my DAUGHTER babysitting other people's children when she's older, either! And I'm kind of stunned that I even have to think of such things...but that's the world we live in now: It's all about liability, isn't it?

I do wish we had some more male voices here to chime in on this. I know that my father, a lifelong teacher/coach, held an assignment coaching high-school girls' athletics for several years. His charges were, for the most part, girls in severe need of a "father figure," who adored him. He helped out many of them above and beyond the call of his "official" role, but I do remember that he was always VERY careful about making sure that he was NEVER alone with his charges without another adult present. At his funeral, the number of women who cried right along with me, like sisters, because of the role he played in their own fatherless lives, touched my heart. I wonder if there were times when these girls were hurting emotionally (that was one thing that counfounded him about girls' athletics--"There's so much CRYING," he'd say), and he thought of his own daughters, and wanted to hug or comfort them, and had to stop himself. I'm sure there were.

Belinda

because I wouldn't have a male babysitter. The reason, similar to kathryn's is that it is easier to have a blanket poicy in place than havee to explain to someone's mother that you don't want *their* son in particular babysitting. Not that this has even come up in my real life as I know no teenage boys who would even entertain the thought of babysitting.

I wonder if some of the divide we are seeing on this issue is women who have been victimized/abused by men in their young lives versus women who have only had positive interactions with me. I fully admit to being in the former group.

I also have a blanket policy against sleep overs.

Ultimately, I've got to kind of shrug my shoulders on this one. You're the parents, so it's ultimately your job to keep your kids safe (hopefully without imparting too much unreasonable fear onto your kids). On the flip side, though, when boys aren't trusted with childcare, they grow into men who naturally think of childcare as something that males don't do. That makes them much less likely to go into teaching, for example.

There are ways around it, though. I worked for the Boy Scouts when I was younger, and they have a lot of policies designed to protect the kids and reduce their liabilities. For instance, they teach leaders that if they need to talk to a boy one on one, do it in the open, like at a picnic table. It sounds like the gym was doing something like this in having two boys watching the kids instead of just one. Notice they didn't feel the need to double up when it was a girl watching them.