The 2% club

When David Stevens told a friend he was working in a nursery, his friend assumed he was working in a garden centre. When he heard he was working with children, not plants, the friend asked with surprise: “Are men allowed to do that?” That was nearly 20 years ago and Stevens says more men have entered childcare since. But the proportion of men in the profession still languishes at just two per cent, according to the Department for Education’s latest statistics for 2010.

The Angel Community Nursery on an estate in central London, which Stevens now manages, offers a glimpse of how men can make a difference. Four years ago, all the staff at this small Pimlico nursery, which is run by London Early Years Foundation (LEYF), were women. Today, three of its five-strong team are men.

When Stevens joined in January 2010 and found two other men there, the benefits soon became clear. “The children here may go to a man for a specific area of play and to a woman for another,” he says. “It’s nice that they have that choice. And families, including single mothers, have commented that it’s great to have male role models for their children.” ?He adds that the men here have created a “less intimidating environment” for fathers, encouraging more of them to interact with the nursery.

Challenging the stereotypes
Stevens opted to pursue a career in childcare after ending up unemployed from the retail world. His father questioned the decision, but this did not sway the then 20-year-old. Neither did the fact that he ended up the only man on his training course, after the two other men in his year dropped out. “I wanted something that would make a difference and was interesting,” he recalls. “I wasn’t bothered about what people say.”

But Stevens acknowledges that plenty of other men are less thick-skinned. He sees the prevailing perception of childcare as women’s work as the biggest obstacle to getting more men into the profession and retaining them. Parents have said to him that they do not want him changing their children’s nappies, leaving him to bite his lip. “The stereotyping needs to be changed,” he says. “People think if you’re a man in childcare, you must be gay, or there’s something wrong with you or you have an ulterior motive. That doesn’t help.”

But research published last year suggests that parents of nursery children have risen above such perceptions and are overwhelmingly supportive of men working with their offspring. Of nearly 1,200 parents surveyed last May by the Major Providers Group, which comprises the 14 largest nursery operators, nearly 98 per cent said they were happy for men to work with three- to five-year-olds. Stevens believes the fact that the parents surveyed have children at nurseries gives more weight to their opinion.

On leaving his office, he is soon sucked into the lively activities of the nursery, bopping to 1980s pop band Five Star with a gaggle of jumping toddlers, then silencing a circle of them with a book reading. Moments later, they are screaming with glee as he turns the book into a snapping crocodile.

At 41, he is at the middle of the age range of the nursery’s three male staff. The oldest, 59-year-old Michael Wills, has been at the nursery for four years, after getting into full-time childcare in another LEYF-run nursery eight years ago. Wills, who previously worked in the export industry, found his new calling in childcare by volunteering at Sunday School, and the realisation took the childless bachelor by surprise.

He believes his role at the nursery helps provide a more natural extension to children’s parenting and instil a more spontaneous style of play. “Most children still have a mum and dad or some male they see as part of the family, so it’s important that when they come away from the family environment, that it’s reflected here as well,” he says. “Women tend to follow guidelines and routines, but men are more prone to spontaneous, out-of-the-box approaches. And they can tune into boys’ interests.”

“Men can help channel that play so that it doesn’t become aggression, so that they learn how to share in their play and their ideas,” he adds. “Some single parents, usually women, might find it hard to cope with boys’ behaviour. But if they have men at nursery, that will help them see that men can be caring and take an interest in them, help them have lots of fun and give them a voice. Later on, especially with boys, it’s going to have an impact on their lives.”

Male role models
Fellow nursery worker, 35-year-old Emma Townsend Paima, has seen the nursery change from an all-female to a male-dominated environment in the four years she has been here and has noticed a difference in the way the men played with the children. “They were playing superheroes and things like that and it was lovely to see,” she recalls. “They interacted with the children in a more boisterous style of play. I started thinking that it’s so good that there are men around, because of course you can take that role as a female practitioner and use your imagination, but somehow, coming from a man, it’s more exciting, more real for them.”

As a single parent, Townsend Paima knows from personal experience the value of having a male worker for her son at nursery. “Having that male role model helps children to have boundaries and to watch what men are doing and how they behave,” she says.

While there has been no shortage of political rhetoric over recent years from Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and others about the importance of attracting more men into childcare, it has failed to shift the proportion of employees who are male, which has remained stubbornly at two per cent for at least 10 years (see box). “This is an extremely difficult issue to tackle, as it’s about dealing with cultural perceptions,” says Daycare Trust chief executive Anand Shukla. “The role of childcare is simply not seen as a male thing.”

The Major Providers’ Group research last year suggests that careers guidance is failing to tackle this perception. Of 113 male school leavers surveyed in a south London school, not one had considered childcare. When asked why not, 54 per cent said they did not want to work in an all-female environment and half said they would be put off by what others thought of them. Thirty-eight per cent of them also cited the sector’s low level of pay as a factor that put them off.
 
Carole Edmond, managing director of Bright Horizons Family Solutions, which has 132 nurseries across the UK and Ireland, believes ministers could take the lead through a national campaign encouraging male school leavers to see childcare as a career option and by developing schemes to create a bridge between unemployed men and the profession.

She cites Scotland’s Men in Childcare initiative as a “great example” to follow. The Edinburgh-based organisation has funding from the Scottish government and Edinburgh Council to commission accredited introductory men-only courses from colleges. The charity has recruited and supported 1,600 men through these free courses since it started 11 years ago and founder Kenny Spence says this has helped double Scotland’s percentage of men in childcare from two to four per cent between 2005 and 2010. “It’s such a shift for men to consider going into childcare – arriving at a course for the first time and finding another 20 men there is really reassuring,” he says.

Spence says his organisation has been commissioned to set up similar courses in Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes. But there is general consensus that government action is needed to make a real difference.

Some sector representatives have tried to take matters into their own hands by forming a working group, which will present recommendations to government and the sector over the next few weeks. The group – which was initiated by Asquith Nurseries chief executive Andy Morris and run in partnership with the Daycare Trust – has already resolved to introduce an annual Men in Childcare Day, starting later this year, to raise people’s awareness of the benefits that men bring to the profession.

Back in Pimlico, parents coming to collect their children from the Angel Community Day Nursery say their children are reaping these benefits. “My son comes back with new interests every day,” says Grant Shearer, dad to three-year-old Thomas. “He likes playing with electrical stuff and building things. And Ricky [the youngest male nursery worker] plays football with him.”

Single mother Sarah-Jane Breach, 22, is no longer with her three-year-old son Lodan’s father, but says she likes men to play with him. “He’s quite boisterous and likes all the rough-and-tumble stuff,” she says. “I think it’s really helped him in his development.”

Men in childcare – an issue awaiting action

• May 2010 The coalition agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats states the aspiration for a “greater gender balance in the early years workforce”
• June 2010 In a speech to children’s charity Barnardo’s, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg reiterates the need for more men in childcare, describing the two per cent statistic as “not good enough”
• July 2011 The Department for Education and Department of Health publish Supporting Families in the Foundation Years, which states the government’s intention to tackle the gender imbalance in the sector
• August 2011 A working group of sector representatives holds its first meeting to tackle the issue. It is formed after Asquith Nurseries chief executive Andy Morris called in February for “urgent collective action” in the sector to root out “shameful discrimination” against men wanting to work in childcare
• December 2011 Representatives from the Major Providers Group meet with children’s minister Sarah Teather to discuss the way forward for men in childcare
• March 2012 Professor Cathy Nutbrown publishes the interim report from her government-commissioned review of early education and childcare qualifications, which describes the recruitment of men into the workforce as a “particular issue” to be tackled