When I was trying to street-proof my kids, one of the first things I taught them was that if they were ever lost in a mall, they should find a woman pushing a stroller. That seemed the safest option, and definitely the easiest to identify.
I thought of my automatic predilection for female caregivers recently when my twelve-year-old daughter took the baby-sitting course. Her fellow students were composed of fourteen girls and one solitary boy, the latter of whom could change diapers better than anyone else there owing to his multitude of younger siblings. Despite this great talent, though, I wondered how much success he would actually have landing baby-sitting jobs. Boys just aren’t considered safe.
It’s an odd generalization because it has so many exceptions. My husband, for instance, is infinitely better with children than I am. Whenever we have little ones at our house, they flock to him, not me. He’s fun. And not just that; as a pediatrician, he’s safer. If they happen to choke, he would actually know what to do. But nevertheless, most people would instinctively trust me more because Keith’s a guy, and we’re so paranoid of abuse that we’ve drilled it into kids’ heads that men are dangerous, and thus are not that welcome around children.
Men, it seems, have heard this accusation loudly and clearly. Statistics Canada reported this year that nationwide only 17% of elementary school teachers are male. I know of some schools in the immediate area that lack even one male teacher. Given that half the student body is male, this dearth does seem unwarranted. And since male teachers are retiring faster than they’re entering the system, that percentage is only going to drop.
Volunteer groups that depend on males are also feeling the crunch. A few years ago the Big Brothers organization out in British Columbia faced a huge crisis after a very well-publicized case of a hockey coach molesting his players. Why would volunteer recruitment drop because men heard of another guy abusing some kids? Surely it’s not because the men fear that they’re going to abuse kids themselves!
No, I think it’s far more likely that this narrative works its way into our consciousness: men are dangerous to kids, and so men shouldn’t be around kids. Even if men know they personally are safe, they also believe that it’s better for everyone if they just stay away to avoid any suspicion. Why put themselves in a position where they will always be under scrutiny? So it’s hardly surprising that organizations that work with kids, whether they’re churches, or Big Brothers, or the YMCA, or Scouting, have recruiting difficulties when it comes to the male gender.
The cliché in this whole scenario is that “if it saves one child, it’s worth it”, and it is hard to argue with that. How can you quantify the suffering of a single abused child, and measure that against the societal cost of squeezing men out of kids’ lives? It’s the age old question of which matters more, the individual or the aggregate? And in this case, I guess I’d have to go with the individual. I don’t hire male baby-sitters. I rarely leave the kids at a friend’s house if only the father is home. But at the same time, I know that this is a huge overreaction.
And please don’t think I’m happy about it. As a society, we have to bemoan what we have become. We are a group of people that believes that it’s good for boys to grow up in a world of women; where a kind neighbour offering to take your son fishing is viewed with suspicion, not gratitude; where everyone avoids the young twenty-something guy who wants to spend some of his spare time helping Boy Scouts rather than on chat rooms in the internet; and where too many girls grow up never knowing what males think, outside of the pop culture messages of violent and misogynistic rappers.
We certainly need to protect kids, but in doing so we are losing part of what made us a strong community and a strong culture. We are losing the men. And that is something to mourn indeed.
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