My daughter and step daughter are teachers, this breaks my heart that people think this way. They are both so passionate about their jobs, and actually do care about their students and enjoy working with children.

Anonymous wrote:OP, do you find it suspicious that your husband wanted kids? How do you know he didn't have nefarious motives when having a child with you?

I know my husband. I don’t know random childcare workers.

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Anonymous wrote:I think it's creepy, yes. Just like how I find male gymnastics coaches creepy. And male nanny's creepy. And male aides in SN classrooms creepy.

Sexism is alive and well.

If it’s sexism if it’s based on fact? Sorry. 95% of sexual predators are men.

If you want to prove you aren’t a misandrist and sacrifice your kids to a male caregiver go for it.

I’ll wear whatever label you want me to label and have protected kids.

Actually, there are MANY women too. Most go undetected because if sexism like yours. You just THINK you are protecting your children. Good luck to them!

+1, I was sexually assaulted by a female coach. People didn't believe me because she was a woman and they thought I must have "misunderstood." I do think there is more female-perpetrated sexual assault than we realize because it doesn't get reported or, even if reported, accusers are not believed. I've read that this is also true for workplace harassment -- women harass more than gets reported because people are embarrassed to report harassment from a woman or reports are quickly dismissed as not credible.

There is also some gender normative stuff that goes on -- female aggressors are more likely to assault/harass other women (it makes sense, people looking for victims will target one who is physically weaker and who is unlikely to be believed). I think my assault was dismissed in part because both parties were female and that made it seem unimportant to others, like some kind of mean girl incident instead of a criminal assault, which is what it was.

I said 95% not all. You were assaulted by that 5% unfortunately.

I personally don’t trust my kid with anyone. Not even my own parents. Never worth the risk.

This is not healthy and is not going to be good for your kid in the long run.

Having a loving and protective parent will not harm my children.

What will is if they are sexually assaulted.

I love it when people with infants have such strong opinions about elementary and teenage kids. It’s almost as great as when childless people have opinions about childbirth or infant care or what they will “allow” hypothetical children to do.

OP - If you want your child to participate in any sort of activity outside of school, they will interact with adults who chose to or are paid to be there. Camp, sports, dance, music, lessons of any sort, Brownies, Cub Scouts, etc.

By the time your child is old enough to participate in these activities, I hope you have managed to form a community. This will help you have connections to these adults and you can understand their motivations. I assure you as a coach for an after school club who is married to a Cub Scout leader, we really do care about your kid and enjoy spending time with them and watching them master new skills. Most of us have a passion for the activity or organization and want to share our love of baseball, swimming, debate, robotics, etc. with kids who want to learn. Sometimes it’s our kid that has a passion for the activity and we step up and volunteer to make it possible for them. I promise you, adults who want to abuse kids aren’t giving up multiple evenings a week and every Saturday morning for months for the chance at 5 min with your kid. When you are still in diapers and formula, it’s hard to imagine that in 7 years you might give up 4 hours of your weekend to learn how to time a swim meet and then spend the next 6 Monday evenings standing by a pool with a stop watch from 5-9pm, all so your child can swim for 30 seconds. But you will likely do something equivalent. Because you love your kid. And because you’ve gotten to know your kid’s friends and you care about them. You do the swim meets for all those kids because you know your neighbor Steve will coach soccer in the fall, your other neighbor Jan give up her living room for 8 weeks to be the “cookie mom”, and Beth and Joe don’t have time to do community theatre anymore, but they will patiently coax your child and her classmates through their lines for hours every Thursday for the 5th grade play. It takes a village.

Bedsides the parents, who are these people?
1. HS students who need jobs - swim coaches, camp counselors, etc.
2. Parents and semi-retired people who want part time jobs or need jobs with hours that allow them to also care for children or family members.
3. People who need flexible jobs to increase or decrease hours as needed due to other obligations in their lives.
4. Teachers, Nannies, and other professionals who make extra money babysitting, tutoring, or teaching lessons.
5. Parents who need summers off to care for their own kids.

Why the heck would anyone do these jobs instead of working at Target? Because lots of people genuinely like kids, in a non-creepy way. Lots of people had a coach/teacher/community member in their life that made a huge positive difference to them as a kid and they want to be that person for someone else.

Anonymous wrote:OP has an infant. She can check back in a couple years and update on this line of thinking. I had some crazy thoughts when I had an infant too (not those crazy thoughts though).

I wouldn’t let my kid wear any clothing with buttons. I made all of his baby food from scratch, etc. (sorry, only had boys, apparently adding to the sexual predator pool). Just so many things that I thought were so important but weren’t.

OP is crazy, at least temporarily.

All the misandrists in this thread are disgusting, horrible, hypocrites and generally terrible human beings.

OP, do you find it suspicious that your husband wanted kids? How do you know he didn't have nefarious motives when having a child with you?

OP, the thing to remember is that not everyone feels the same as you do about other people’s kids. I love my kids but I also just… really love kids. I used to volunteer with a coding camp where we had a crowd of 6-9 year olds to handle and I thought it was amazingly fun! Exhausting for sure but fun! I love how their minds work and they way they look at the world that less informed by societal norms and how they’re still impressed by adults. (I am dreading the teen years with my kids. I didn’t understand teenagers when I was a teenager.)

If I had had fewer career options or been less good at school I might seriously have consider a career in elementary or preschool education. I still considered nannying the summer after my junior year of college instead of taking a prestigious internship because I was feeling burnt out and miserable with my chosen white collar career path. I ended up sticking with the white collar internship and then job and I’m glad I did because frankly money is nice but if I had not been able to afford to attend a great college or hadn’t had the kind of brain that did well with computer work, ECE might have been a good fit for me. So no, I don’t assume everyone who wants to work with children is a creep. I assume they like working with kids and didn’t have the opportunity or skills or interests to pursue something more lucrative.

That being said, I do understand your point of view too. I barely have any babysitters because I’m nervous at leaving my children with adults I haven’t really thoroughly vetted (in my case the anxiety is based in them being inattentive rather than intentionally abusive). For me this anxiety has eased as the kids get older and are less entirely dependent on their caregivers. I hope your anxiety eases too.

I think you’re nuts, OP.

Thank goodness we have people that want to teach, coach volunteer and nutrient children.

Anonymous wrote:I just watched a documentary about rampant sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts so this is freshly on my mind but I don’t think I trust people who want to work around kids.

I just guess I can’t understand their reasoning unless it’s nefarious?

The pay in these jobs is always very low and very rarely have good benefits. I just don’t believe people do it because they “love” other peoples kids. I love my kid, but not really anyone else’s. I don’t want them harmed of course but never would I willingly spend any amount of time with someone else’s kids. Kids are gross and obnoxious. The only reason I can see people putting up with it would be if they’re their kids or they’re paid incredibly well to put up with it.

And I don’t want to seem like I’m demonizing educators. I can somewhat understand the draw for teachers. I’m sure helping young people learn can give some people an internal, moral drive.

But I just can’t shake this suspicion of yeah, obviously volunteer based work like Cub Scout leaders or children’s swim coaches or any job where an adult chooses to spend a lot of time with children often without parents.

My baby is an infant and only is cared for by myself, my DH and my mother but at some point I’ll have to let her be under the care of someone else and it just really scares me.

We toured a daycare when DD was about 4 months old and I just thought… why would anyone work here? It seemed like hell and the pay was abysmal. My mind couldn’t shake the idea that these people just wanted access to my kid and it freaked me out.

Call me crazy, but think about it. What benefits are there? Why would some 40-year-old choose to spend all day with other peoples kids making $15 an hour when they could have an easier job with adult interaction and make $18 an hour? I just can’t believe it’s a “goodness of their heart” thing. People don’t work like that.

OP there are people who have goodness in their heart and there are people who have evil in their heart.

Your job as a parent is to protect but also educate. You would benefit greatly from reading about sexual predators FROM sexual predators. They need opportunity, ignorance, and uninvolved/trusting parents.
Opportunity- time alone and time for trust to develop. ANY consistent efforts to get access to your child especially with secrets or big displays of affection/money/presents/food/etc.
Ignorance- parents who don't educate their children or talk to them about appropriate touch and/or label body parts appropriately. parents who don't practice what they preach regarding consent. stop means stop. no means no. not advocating for your child when another adult or kid tramples their boundaries and/or continues non consensual activities- even if its all "in fun".
Uninvolved/too trusting parents- whether its apathy about their children, too many children to keep track of, being overwhelmed by being a single parent, kid is in an abusive home (see opportunity again), etc. they infiltrate and make it seem like a favor to you and how AMAZING your kid is

I also want to tap into what some other posters have said about wanting to work with kids. There is such thing as emotional investment in children that can be exploitative but not predatory from a sexual standpoint. Children are a wonderful gift to humanity and are one of the most vulnerable populations. Their goodness and joy are a much-needed light. Wanting to be around them and encouraging that and cultivating their joy and power is not the same as exploitative or predatory but there is some overlap in behaviors because of the engagement factor.

Tough for the original poster, I mean

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry that you can't fathom that other people find joy in working with children.

I love teenagers. They are hilarious and witty and so excited about changing the world. They reinvigorate me and remind me there is good in the world.

I used to teach teenagers in my sport, and I agree with you. We always followed SafeSport practices, even before there was SafeSport. It must be tough for you to have so much distrust and fear.

OP, a news anchor recently mailed questionnaires to 800 convicted child molesters. Two hundred responded, and out of those 200, only one of them molested somebody they were unrelated to, and it almost always happened in the victim's own home.

Sometimes it's the swim coach, but most of the time it's everybody's favorite uncle.

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Anonymous wrote:I think it's creepy, yes. Just like how I find male gymnastics coaches creepy. And male nanny's creepy. And male aides in SN classrooms creepy.

Sexism is alive and well.

If it’s sexism if it’s based on fact? Sorry. 95% of sexual predators are men.

If you want to prove you aren’t a misandrist and sacrifice your kids to a male caregiver go for it.

I’ll wear whatever label you want me to label and have protected kids.

Actually, there are MANY women too. Most go undetected because if sexism like yours. You just THINK you are protecting your children. Good luck to them!

+1, I was sexually assaulted by a female coach. People didn't believe me because she was a woman and they thought I must have "misunderstood." I do think there is more female-perpetrated sexual assault than we realize because it doesn't get reported or, even if reported, accusers are not believed. I've read that this is also true for workplace harassment -- women harass more than gets reported because people are embarrassed to report harassment from a woman or reports are quickly dismissed as not credible.

There is also some gender normative stuff that goes on -- female aggressors are more likely to assault/harass other women (it makes sense, people looking for victims will target one who is physically weaker and who is unlikely to be believed). I think my assault was dismissed in part because both parties were female and that made it seem unimportant to others, like some kind of mean girl incident instead of a criminal assault, which is what it was.

I said 95% not all. You were assaulted by that 5% unfortunately.

I personally don’t trust my kid with anyone. Not even my own parents. Never worth the risk.

You mean 95% of the known sex offenders are male? The PP is referring to a female sex offender who was never caught, like most female sex offenders - they are never caught! I think the num er is closer to 50/50 than society thinks. We just don't believe it when the perpetrator is a woman. Or, like all the cases in the news where a middle school teacher grooms a boy, we partially victim blame.

Pedophilia typically comes from those who've been molested themselves - that's a LOT of women. I think the statistics are 1 in 5 women have been sexually abused sometime in their life. That changes their thought patterns. We just have so much sexism in society we don't go after female predators the way we do men. Therefore, sure make the majority of registered offenders are men, because the women are not registered.

Some of us work with kids because we enjoy it. I’ve been doing it for more than 20 years. Watching a child grow is amazing every single time. I understand kids, and how they see the world. I have a whole lot of patience with children, and very little with adults. It’s the adults who are exhausting.

I recently looked into switching careers. I’d like to be a paralegal, but that would be a 40% pay cut. Im not talking about big law, because I don’t live where those firms are located.

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Anonymous wrote:I think it's creepy, yes. Just like how I find male gymnastics coaches creepy. And male nanny's creepy. And male aides in SN classrooms creepy.

Sexism is alive and well.

This is so sad. My son is great with kids. He's been an incredible babysitter and camp counselor and will be a wonderful father someday if he chooses to have kids. So, he's automatically a pedophile if he decides to be a teacher? You are certifiable