Predictably, this article is getting a lot of attention: Why I Won’t Let Any Male Babysit My Children, by Kasey Edwards, in Melbourne, Australia:
When our first daughter was born my husband and I made a family rule: no man would ever babysit our children. No exceptions. This includes male relatives and friends and even extracurricular and holiday programs, such as basketball camp, where men can have unrestricted and unsupervised access to children.
Eight years, and another daughter later, we have not wavered on this decision.
Kasey trots out the idea that since more men molest kids than women do, it’s just prudent to treat all men as potential predators. She actually presents this as a way of NOT insulting them:
My husband and I do not want to delve into the characters of every man that we know and assess whether or not they are potential sexual predators, so we apply our rule to all men to avoid casting aspersions on people.
But of course she IS casting aspersions on 50% of the population and doing her own little bit to continue the de-normalization of adult/child interactions, at least so long as a (shudder) male is involved.
What’s so strange to me is the author’s absolute conviction that this is making her kids safe, which not only ignores the fact that women can molest kids, too, but the other fact: That most people of either gender will NOT.
I do agree with Kasey when she quotes a study stating that while most parents fear stranger-danger…
“…in the vast majority of cases, children’s abusers are known to them”. Children are at far greater risk from relatives, siblings, friends, and other known adults such as priests, teachers and coaches.
But the answer is not to demonize anyone with a Y chromosome. It’s to teach your kids The Three R’s:
*Recognize — that no one can touch you where you bathing suit covers.
*Resist — Yell, kick, run away. Don’t be nice if someone is bothering you.
* Report — Even if the person makes you promise not to tell…TELL. Reassure your kids that you will not be mad at them no matter what transpired.
These simple rules will keep kids safer than banishing any and all males. But obviously, this is not the author’s train of thought. She wrote:
I know it’s a hard line, some would say extreme. But…hurting peoples’ feelings is the price my husband and I are prepared to pay.
Ah me. In the end, the real question isn’t: How extreme is this position? It’s how can we keep it from becoming unextreme? – L
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107 Comments
So by her logic, hubby couldn’t babysit the girls alone either. He is a relative. Also, trans-men (former women) couldn’t either. The whole thing is just insane anyway. Overall, I don’t think the human mind has evolved very much since the monkey stages.
I find that infuriating, bigoted, and insulting. She is demonizing half the population.
Is she going to chaperone her two daughter’s dates? I mean, if she is concerned about sexual assault, that would include date rape. At what point will her daughters be allowed to date? 18? 21? 30? For how long does she plan to prevent her daughters from being alone with a man?
Is she going to refuse to let either daughter have a male teacher? That easy to do in elementary, but you hit middle school, high school, and college and likely there will be some. And don’t forget the male students in school.
She is going to raise 2 daughters who are terrified of men.
Many child sexual assault cases are kids touching kids. Sisters touching sisters, even.
And me, when I found an actual male teen willing to babysit for my son, I was in heaven because I knew how thrilled my little boy would be to have a “big guy” to play with! (And yes, I looked specifically for a boy sitter. Does that make me sexist?)
She probably got this idea from one of those parenting sites. I’ve heard many women online say similar.
In practice, it’s not hard to implement since most people trying to get a job in child care are women anyway.
Though, the restriction on coaches / camps could get difficult. What about kids going for a visit to their friend’s house and the friend’s dad is home? How about school teachers? Birthday parties? Bus drivers?
As a single mom, I always looked for opportunities for my daughters to spend time with men. So (aside from Grandpa babysitting sometimes) they had a few male coaches in the preschool years, more as they got older. Now they have a male teacher for most of the day, including gym. (The only complaint I’ve heard is that they would rather not have a guy teach them about reproduction. 😛 But it didn’t faze them when he suggested sports bras for gym class.)
Oh, and those folks would have lost it ziplining in Costa Rica’s cloud forest. There were 7 segments to zipline through, and a couple of them required the small people to be held and leg-hugged by a bigger person. A very nice male stranger, whose own son had chickened out, rode with my daughter. It was either him or one of the itinerant workers. I suppose some families would just have to abort the experience and hike back to wherever their car was. Kuz we can’t have our daughters touched by a man!
This bugs me so much it isnt even funny. Does she want her girls to be literal shut-ins because men cannot be avoided in…GASP…the real world?
As the mother of a teenage boy who would make a great babysitter, I really resent that his opportunities are limited by prejudiced people like this.
To avoid the tiny chance that they may come across someone with bad intentions, they’re depriving their girls of so many good opportunities. (And no matter how they try to spin it, they are certainly “casting aspersions on people.”)
Not to mention the fact that if they never spend any time with men, they’ll never have the chance to develop a sense of what feels creepy to them and what doesn’t. I think they’ll be in more danger as young adult women than they would otherwise.
for the first time I can recall I want to go to the original post and shame the writer. What a horrible way to be. And her husband is on board with it! How awful for everyone they know, from nephews on up!
Why does everybody feel the need to write an article about every parenting decision they make? If she hadn’t posted it, nobody would know about her “rule,” since almost all babysitters are girls anyway.
@Katie G:
Perhaps her husband has no choice to be on board?
Dollars to Donuts hubby’s life ain’t a bowl of peaches Ms Edwards.
It’s really good that she doesn’t have sons, and I hope she doesn’t ever have any. I can’t imagine a boy being raised in a home with this attitude.
I feel sorry for the grandpas in that family.
@Jessica and @mer
Just take a look at the headlines of the articles that she has written. It is evident that she writes about any problem injustice that she experiences or perceives. Her poor husband, with two young daughters, certainly is in an unenviable position.
http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/by/Kasey-Edwards
I hope, for his sake, that her father has passed and doesn’t have to come to the realization of the type of person his daughter has become.
I knew this woman. Not literally, but someone exactly like her. And the husband was completely on board. In fact, he had weird exclusions for himself being around children as a male. He would not allow his own children in the bed with him. He would not allow any child other than his own to sit on his lap. He would never be alone with another child. I don’t recall him ever spending much time alone with his own children, and yet he doted on them which always seemed weird. I always kinda wondered if he had pedophilic desires that he was suppressing because it was all very odd and over-the-top.
While it is likely not difficult to avoid male babysitters for your children, there have been many times when my daughter has planned a playdate or sleepover with a friend when the father was going to be the only parent home. This has included sleepovers where only dad was going to be home all night long because mom was either out of town or not the custodial parent. Often I didn’t even know this until I dropped my child off because it would never occur to me to ask or care.
I hope she’s a stay at home mom, because summer camp would be a killer. Even my daughters’ girl scout camp has male lifeguards.
I have often left my daughter in the care of her male karate teachers and most of the students at her level are boys or men. The teachers both male and female are good role models for physical fitness and character development. They don’t let her quit on herself when a karate move is hard to master.
Her regular school bus driver is a man and today she is coming home early on the county bus (school lets out at noon) which is normally a male bus driver. I prefer her regular high school bus driver to her middle school bus driver a female who used to cut cars off with her bus. My daughter will be home safe and sound today complaining about her weekend homework.
“Perhaps her husband has no choice to be on board?”
He could have chosen not to marry her.
If she had said she wouldn’t let Black or Latino people care for her children, everyone would be calling this out for what it is, which is prejudice and bigotry against a large subset of the population. My favorite teacher was a man, and I loved following my father around. All this woman is doing is perpetuating a different kind of abuse.
What is she getting in exchange for this price?
Incidentally, how does she feel about gay men? Or lesbian women for that matter?
Happily,a link within the article says “By teaching children to fear men, we are letting them down”.
I can’t imagine what attitudes toward men the daughters will have. “No, grandpa can’t take care of you tonight; he might touch you in places your bathing suit covers.”
Yes, I totally know these words aren’t the ones used in this family (hopefully). But the sentiment will get out there sometime and, when it’s an adult that is otherwise totally trusted and probably loved, it’s got to be confusing.
Interesting question “what about lesbian women” asked by an above poster.
When I was little, our next-door neighbor teen girl was often our babysitter. My parents discovered that she was having her lesbian girlfriend over while “babysitting” and they had sex on our couch. My oldest brother confided that they engaged him in sexual behaviors. This of course aroused non-age-appropriate curiosity, which led to additional behaviors affecting other children (not illegal as far as I know, but inappropriate.)
So yeah, avoiding male caregivers is kind of beside the point.
If either of their daughters had Gender Dysphoria and thought themselves to be a boy and the parents allowed them to live life as a boy no one would say a word. Hell, they would be praised for their “progressive” views. You do not like their decision? Too bad. Deal with it.
This family has let their fear of molesters and peadofiles affect their daily lives in really unhealthy ways. I bet some of their friends and family say to them, “That’s crazy. Knock it off, it isn’t good for you or your kids to live that way”. Now, unlike previous eras, you can connect with all the people all over the world who share your phobias and you can encourage one another to ignore your critics.
These insane ideas tend to backfire spectacularly. Leave aside for a moment issues like making your kid a social pariah, their stunted social development, and their eventual rebellion. Can you imagine sending your kid off to adulthood when he or she has literally never interacted with an adult man in a private setting? How will they know what is healthy, or normal, or what is creepy, or dangerous? This is just a really bad way to raise kids.
There was another article like this a while back: http://pickanytwo.net/protecting-children-from-sexual-abuse/
And I posted in the comments: “…these fears aren’t rational, and they can affect a family’s ability to lead a normal life, and fears like these can be counter-productive in the long run.
The CDC has some good literature on risk factors and preventative factors for abuse. Risk factors for abuse include social isolation, rejection from peers, anti-social attitudes, among a bunch of other things. Protective factors include things like strong peer networks, caring adults outside the family who can serve as role models or mentors, stable family relationships, involvement in social activities and the community. You don’t need to read the literature for your instincts to tell you that the CDC is on to something. The socially awkward, fearful, isolated kid is the one that gets picked on or gets into bad things as a teen.
Your family policy means no sleepovers, no going to a best friend’s house after school if her Dad might be there, no church retreats, no extra-curriculars that are coached by men, no going to the water park with a best friend, no over-night volleyball tournaments, and so on. If they know about the policy, other moms and dads might be hesitant to let your kids come over because they don’t want to jump through hoops to accommodate the policy, or because they are afraid that you would accuse them of something horrible. You can try to engineer “alternative” experiences, but there is no substitute for real world experience. It will be hard work to raise confident, savvy kids without these types of experiences. Like they say, “you can’t childproof the world, but you can try to world-proof your kid”.”
What would she do if she had a son?
Would his friends be banned from being around her girls?
I don’t understand the irrational logic of her highly controlling decision to limit male interactions with her daughters.
Males, females, animals, a wealth of experiences, contribute to a happy childhood. Extreme fear of abuse of your children that would cause you to limit their *exposure* to a gender is something you need to discuss with a healthcare professional.
“…hurting peoples’ feelings is the price my husband and I are prepared to pay.”
You are mostly hurting you own daughters and their development of healthy relationships with males, learning what respect, trust, and love look like. Male coaches, male teachers, male babysitters- are opportunities for meaningful relationships in these young girls lives- good ones! Why you would restrict them from such an important part of their emotional development is beyond me.
I also have 2 beautiful girls. And a son.
I HATE that my son no longer babysits (the daughter has most of the jobs now) and that to get a job as a lifeguard at our local pool, he must pass the Red Cross certification (he already did) and pay for background abuse clearances and FBI fingerprinting, get a drug and alcohol test, just to work for $12 an hour (and pay for the certifications and clearances!). He’s 15!
This paranoia and innate mistrust of men is SICK. And expensive!
If anyone has a puppy they can loan me so I can kick it I would appreciate it.
I am sitting in my office and do not have one readily available, maybe I should start keeping a supply or something.
William, this article has nothing to do with transgender issues. Why do you feel the need to bring it up?
The issue of what if she had a boy is an interesting one. Men also have higher rates than women of abusing boys. So she would not let any males care for her son(s) either, right?
Here’s the full link to the aforementioned rebuttal article: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/by-teaching-children-to-fear-men-we-are-letting-our-kids-down-20170225-gul5hk.html
As a kid back in the late 80s/early 90s, my favorite babysitter was a guy. Who incidentally is now a popular musician–my personal claim to fame.
Also, as someone who has taught and still teaches in Title 1 elementary schools, this lady wouldn’t believe the number of single moms who REQUEST male teachers, just so their kids can have a positive male role model.
I had a good friend like this. She was in a pinch once and I offered that we could watch her daughter. She knew my husband was the stay at home parent and informed me that it would only work if I was home as her daughter was “not allowed to be alone with men.” She then spent several minutes explaining that it was nothing against my husband, who was home with our girls, personally. I always wondered what sort of lesson that was teaching her son.
Geez, she sounds like a fun date.
Ha! Using the rationale of Kasey Edwards of Melbourne, Australia:, men should take away women’s right to vote and all sorts of other rights simply because “some” women are “too emotional to make rational decisions.”
This post is so depressing. The woman states her child raising philosophy was formed 8 years ago and has not changed in all that time.
Look over at the side bar of this page. FRK is just over 8 years old. I’ve been here from the beginning. I pre-ordered the book before publication and read it completely in one sitting when it arrived. It gave me a glimmer of hope that raising kids and being a kid could be accomplished in a way that did not include total fear of everything and everybody.
This blog has especially made the point again and again that ALL MEN ARE NOT MONSTERS.
That glimmer of hope was brightened when I began seeing that particular statement in other publications by other writers reinforced by their comment participants.
Today…..the glimmer of hope has been snuffed out……nothing has changed.
I will say again as I have in other stories of this type here. I believe this woman is the monster in her children’s lives. And I know I’ll be flamed and scorched for this next bit but I also believe she is doing far more damage to them than any random encounter with a random male and yes, I’m including “THAT” which you’re all thinking.
Lenore Skenazy has nothing but praise from me for all she is fighting for.
I am certain I will never see the success of her efforts in my life.
For those of you unaware of my previous posts – I am a single male 59 years old. I was never abused as a child. I have never abused a child.
I just wish kids lives could be better than they are.
So does she not allow her husband to be alone with the girls?
The woman is demented and needs to get a grip on reality. The media channels all over the world need to get a grip and stop making these insecure women into crazy helicopter moms because of the “worst case” kind of reporting. I can only shake my head!
Better get that dad away from his kids–he’s male and should never be trusted.
If she and her husband get divorced, will he be allowed to see his children?
When my daughter was smaller, I needed someone to watch her until I got home from work. The best option was a teenaged neighbor boy, down the hall, in our apartment building. I never had misgivings – even though I had been molested by a male babysitter as a child. This boy was responsible, recommended by his dad (a police officer) and a friendly face my daughter already knew. I have never EVER regretted it.
And, ironically, the children she is trying to protect will almost assuredly be damaged. What is the chance that those girls will grow up able to trust men or form any kind of normal relationship with men? And if, God forbid, she produces a son, how can he avoid growing up without internalizing a deep self-loathing for being a disgusting male?
There is a better way available. Make sure a relative never is alone with her children. That’s the real danger. Also, when it comes to babysitting require two sitters unknown to each other. Predators run in packs in the wild so it is probably the same in civilization. If you have two sitters who don’t know each other neither predator (worst case assumption) would act out of fear that their unknown partner might not be a pedophile.
I realize that there are certain logistical problems. It is hard to find people who are strangers to each other. Also, you couldn’t use the same combinations in case they become friends. An in-depth background check on 30-40 possible sitters should produce enough safe individuals to last at least a year though. After all, if you already believe that 50% of the population presents a clear and present danger to your children shouldn’t you take an extra little step to protect your children.
“But…hurting peoples’ feelings is the price my husband and I are prepared to pay.”
Well look, it’s HER kids and she has a right to raise them how she sees fit and she does have the final say in whom she allows to spend time with her kids. As a male, her viewpoint on this matter doesn’t hurt my feelings at all. If she has a brother whom she grew up with and loves very much, I’m sure she would deny him unattended access to her kids too. Same with her father (the kid’s grandfather).
But if anyone would use her logic, they’d refuse to get on the same airplane with a Muslim onboard due to the stereotype that all, or most, Muslims are terrorists. How prejudice and paranoid would that be? Or they would remove their child from the classroom if they found out his teacher was gay. How bigoted would that be? Why is it ok and acceptable for people to be prejudice against the male species but not ok against any sexual persuasion, race, religion, creed or culture or against the female species?
Ok, it’s HER kids but I think she’s subliminally instilling mistrust and prejudice within her children’s minds.
I hope she keeps a close eye on that husband of hers. After all, men are not to be trusted. I wonder if she still lives with her parents so she doesn’t have to be alone with hubby…
Backroads – tell me! Who was your babysitter?
This Edwards woman is ridiculous. When I was little, the only time I was horrified about being left alone with a man in charge was our neighbor who always ran around the house in his underwear. I was just embarrassed for him. He never touched me. And yeah, his son – SON – was my best friend growing up.
My grandfather watched me a lot. When I was around five I got sick all over me and him. He just stripped both of us down and we got in the shower. Probably the only reason I remember it is because how pissed my mom was when he just left the puke covered clothes on the bathroom floor. The memory still makes me giggle, so I guess he never got around to abusing me.
And now I’m thinking about my grandfather. He died when I was 11, but I will forever carry his wisdom with me. Like, if you’re in the ocean and a shark tries to attack, punch him in the nose. If you’re in the jungle and a tiger attacks, stick your arm down his throat as far as you can, grab something and PULL. Don’t eat green plums. If you want to get away with murder, stab someone in the eye with an icicle. No evidence.
I’m 54 and I still miss him. I can’t even imagine if my mother had decided to deprive me of my experiences with him.
“I wonder if she still lives with her parents so she doesn’t have to be alone with hubby…”
Well, with her *mom*, cuz her father can’t be around those girls either.
well, I guess that since she’s in Australia, she won’t be asking me to look after them. But I hope she finds some female malacologist to teach them about land snails.
I can promise you that if someone advocated the reverse there would be outrage from women’s groups.
To wit: there have been quite a few news stories in this area regarding female teachers having inappropriate relationships with boys, in fact there have been way more such stories than stories of male teachers violating little girls. What if I went to my son’s school and insisted that only male teachers should be teaching them and that they need to terminate their female principal and replace her with a male principal?
I can promise you that the author of that article would pitch a fit, but she’s no better. Frankly, she’s every bit as much of a bigot as anyone wearing hoods and burning crosses is.
Years ago, my husband and I watched some friends’ children. As they were giving us instructions (what time the kids go to bed, where the special stuffed animal is, etc.), they stopped and said, “Oh, one more thing. Nick can’t change our daughter’s diaper or put on her pajamas, just Crystal.” They didn’t let any male do that, they said quite proudly, to protect her. Nick immediately felt embarrassed — they were calling him a possible child molester, after all — but I was surprised that *I* immediately felt intense shame, as well! Because if Nick is a possible predator and I married him and brought him to his next victims, what does that say about me and my judgment?
It’s an insult to both sexes to couch it in nice terms and say that that you don’t want to “tempt” any man by the sight of a poopy diaper, in my opinion. We never babysat for those people again.
<>
Ryan Shupe of Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band.
“”Backroads — tell me! Who was your babysitter?””
Ryan Shupe of Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band
I think the phrase
“where men can have unrestricted and unsupervised access to children”
really reflects her image of the sort of sexual smorgasbord that exists when men’s desires aren’t tempered by the constant presence of their wives or mothers.
@Jason- elaborate please? Your comment sounds like men are untrustworthy without women, and I hope that’s not what you mean.
You guys are missing the logic of this. Studies show that nine out of ten male baby-sitters attempt to pair the green onesie with the purple socks. And don’t even get me started on what they do to the hair. Our children deserve better.
@Jason
“really reflects her image of the sort of sexual smorgasbord that exists when men’s desires aren’t tempered by the constant presence of their wives or mothers.”
Hmmm. Perhaps she should read LRH’s comments:
“To wit: there have been quite a few news stories in this area regarding female teachers having inappropriate relationships with boys, in fact there have been way more such stories than stories of male teachers violating little girls.”
That was going on when I was in high school. And from what I remember, very few of these women ever faced legal charges. If the “men are more likely to molest” belief comes from official arrest and conviction records, it may not reflect what actually happens, but what is socially acceptable to prosecute – men always, women rarely.
So happy I’ll never be asked to babysit that feminazi’s bitches of kids (no doubt she’s poured her vile hatred of men into her children’s minds to the point they don’t dare question it in the least, and will scream “pedophile” every time they see a lone man walking somewhere).
Katie G.,
Here’s what Jason wrote, with emphasis:
“…really reflects *her image* of the sort of sexual smorgasbord….”
I thought it was pretty clear what he was saying.
Mea culpa- I missed “her image”. Oops!
I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought this, but, said husband is a man…
Also: yes, it’s awkward as heck when a friend asks you to come over/sleepover and your parent(s) says no and gives you the “it’s not YOU we don’t trust, it’s other people” speech. Cause then it’s up to you to figure out something better than “my mom/dad said no because s/he thinks your parents are potential predators” to tell your friend :-/
Eek! A male!
I’m always shocked at some of these overly extreme parenting decisions. I came to a lot of realizations as the parent of a boy. I realized that the male teachers, at least in grade school seem to have mostly disappeared. We had at least three when I was in school. I think it’s good for young boys to have older males around. I have two brothers who don’t have kids & they are great with mine. I’ve been wanting to hire a male baby sitter just to take my kids to the park & play in ways I’m too exhausted to. I do remember when my son was a baby & was going to a parents support group there was one dad, but I think he felt left out & stopped coming. There are lots of dads around the school campus either because they have more flexible schedules, are self employed, divorce or they stay at home. I enjoy getting to know them & we have gone on playdates together, no different than with moms. About half of the afterschool care staff are young males, maybe more than half. Each sex has different things to offer, no matter how much we want to think we are equal & the same we are not & to dismiss half is doing her kids a disservice.
Backroads – Very cool! I’ve even heard of him, although I don’t listen to much country.
You guys are missing the logic of this. Studies show that nine out of ten male baby-sitters attempt to pair the green onesie with the purple socks. And don’t even get me started on what they do to the hair. Our children deserve better.””
My husband is forbidden from our daughter’s pajamas. He keeps squeezing the baby’s pjs on the 3-year-old.
News flash Kasey: Plenty of despicable women out there that do terrible things to children as well. Do your research before making yourself believe in your own ignorance.
But… Kasey’s daughters are just so darn attractive that ANYONE WHO MEETS them would just naturally want to molest them.
So… these kids will grow up not knowing how to handle any sort of relationship with a male person, which means they won’t learn to tell the good ones from the bad ones until well after they are grown and out on their own, and therefore able to make FAR MORE SERIOUS mistakes.
Okay, let’s say that Kasey is able to plan out her daughters’ entire childhood so that they never have any contact with adult males. She requests only female teachers when she enrolls them in school and extra-curricular activities, and steers them more towards female-dominated activities anyway, like Girl Scouts/Girl Guides, and ballet (which men can totally do too, but it seems to be mostly women who teach ballet to children). So, all the best-laid plans are in place for Kasey’s daughters to live a life completely free of unsupervised contact with adult males, until they turn eighteen, leave for college/university, or otherwise become independent. I’m not saying it’s a good idea, but if Kasey can arrange that, it’d be quite a feat.
But, here’s the thing–life isn’t perfect, and eventually, their regular teacher/dance coach/choir director/whatever, might get sick or have something else come up, and leave them with a substitute who happens to be male. Or, it could even just be a minor emergency within the school day; for example, the Kasey-approved female teacher might have to step out of class for a moment to, say, help a child who’s spilled paint on him-or-herself during art class. Not wanting to leave a class full of kids alone for the time it takes to do that, she asks the next teacher she sees walking down the hall to pinch-hit for her……..and he, again, happens to be male. Or, let’s say one of Kasey’s girls gets sick, and has to be taken to the doctor. Their regular family doctor is booked solid, so they go to the walk-in clinic, and the doctor on duty that day is male…..and so on, and so forth. The most likely result of Kasey planning her daughter’s lives so that they don’t have any unsupervised time with adult men, is that they’d have no PLANNED unsupervised time with adult men–there’s still a good chance that it would happen at some point anyway, because for whatever reason, something went wrong, someone had to fill in, and that someone had a Y chromosome.
Even if nothing happens (which is the most likely result, because most schools, medical offices, and children’s activities AREN’T, in fact, run by pedophiles), chances are, Kasey is going to raise holy hell. Once upon a time, the correct response to an irrational tantrum like that would be to tell the person that life isn’t perfect, and Blahblah School/Whatsit Dance Academy/Whoozit Medical Clinic/the children’s choir can’t be all things to all people, and maybe Kasey and her family would be happier elsewhere. Actually, I still think that that’s the correct response, but in the days of Yelp reviews, Internet blogs, minute-by-minute status updates on Facebook, and economic uncertainty, people are more likely to cave to unreasonable demands, for fear of getting slandered in front of all and sundry. So, the more likely response would be, “Kasey, we’re so sorry; we’ll make sure this never happens again,” and as a result, boys and men are going to have an even harder time in this world than they already do.
One other small thing–I read the article, but Kasey doesn’t say whether she herself was sexually abused as a child, by a known male relative, family friend, babysitter, teacher, Little League coach, or whatever. If she was, I feel awful for her, but all I saw was a bunch of statistics, that focused on the fact that men are statistically more likely to molest children than women, but left out the fact that most adults, of both genders, are good people who can be around children without molesting them at all.
@Crystal: “We never babysat for those people again.”
I would have walked out immediately. This surpasses the level of insult I am prepared to tolerate from anyone.
My husband (soon to be ex) insisted from birth of our twin boys on no male babysitters. His main reason was that males are not as sensitive or concerned about children as females, and thus wouldn’t be as likely to protect them. This made me so sad, because my boys wanted to be around teen boys and men! I even once snuck in a male babysitter when I thought H wouldn’t know but I was always scared the kids would mention it and I’d be in trouble. Anyways, I finally inferred that the real reason was that my ex didn’t ever want his child to prefer, even for an afternoon, another male caregiver to him. Now the twins are 7 and I hope to be free of this man’s control of me. However, he did write into the parenting plan that no one can live in the house with the children without a CORI check. I suppose that is reasonable, but it still smacks of more fear than I think is warranted.
Does that include her husband( he is male?) only female doctors… in an emergency will she wait for a female doctor?
@Dienne – thank you, that was, indeed, my intended meaning. Re-reading, tho, I could probably have phrased it more clearly.
People like this is why I gave up my dream of coaching little league. I don’t have a kid, so I am sure that someone out there would assume because I’m a male who wants to teach kids baseball (loved little league as a kid…team building, making friends) but doesn’t have kids must be a pervy perv.
The idea that here daughter could be molested is mind numbing – literally. The event of this happening is so devastating that the idea of ‘hurting men’s feeling’ is amazingly small in comparison.
(please don’t blast me, I’m not done) This can fill a person’s head so much that they can’t consider anything else! The real trouble is that this survival mode thinking is primitive. That means that it does not have the intelligence to assess risk. It can’t tell the difference from a 1/100 and a 1/1,000,000 risk
She’s training her daughter to cautious of any man. This mistrust seed grows and sometimes becomes a real monster that has quite a negative impact on her life. This ‘monster doesn’t develop in all (of course) but the chances of it occurring are many thousands of times greater than the risk that these parents are protecting her from.
This ‘male discrimination’ is a very small thing. However, thousands of small things add up. On my blog, I compare each small thing as a grain of sand. I have an animation of a bored shipwrecked person throwing sand in the water for entertainment. After all, each grain of sand is so insignificant that it’s ‘impossible’ that it can make any difference. THAT IS until he sees that the erosion is making his island disappear!
In the same way, the male discrimination and over-caution adds up and can become anxiety.
http://www.onmysoapboxx.com/false-info
“However, he did write into the parenting plan that no one can live in the house with the children without a CORI check”
Again the blind trust in impersonal, bureaucratic institutions, and the mistrust of personal judgement.
@James Pollock
“So… these kids will grow up not knowing how to handle any sort of relationship with a male person, which means they won’t learn to tell the good ones from the bad ones until well after they are grown and out on their own, and therefore able to make FAR MORE SERIOUS mistakes.”
I see that general principle in all non-free-range parenting: if they don’t start walking around their neighborhood, how are they going to learn to get around anywhere they might live? If they can’t cut up their own food with a kitchen knife, how are they ever going to feed themselves? If they can’t talk to strangers, how are they ever going to interact with someone outside the immediate family? There seems to be the implicit belief that at 18 or 21 or 35 somehow they’ll just be “old enough” and magically know how to do these things.
“I see that general principle in all non-free-range parenting: if they don’t start walking around their neighborhood, how are they going to learn to get around anywhere they might live?”
This particular example isn’t a very good one; people aren’t relying on their own navigation skills anymore. Want to find something, and how to get there? Don’t need to know all the streets or how to find it… just ask your phone, and Google will navigate you right to it, whatever “it” is…
The answer to your general complaint (and mine) is “they’ll learn that later”. The point is to have the “kids” be able to operate independently by the time they reach adulthood, meaning it’s ok if they master it at 3 or 17. “Free range”, in general, says that kids should do those things they can do. It doesn’t (or at least, I don’t think it does) include just dropping the kids off at “the real world” with no rules and no resources. Take driving, for example. Some kids want the independence and seek out a permit starting on their 15th birthday and a license on their 16th. Some kids are more lackadaisical about driving. Being “free range” doesn’t mean handing over the car keys to a 10-year-old and complaining that the neighbors keep calling the police to report a 10-year-old behind the wheel of the family car.
I kept my child in after-school daycare long after I knew she was capable of being left at home safely. I had several reasons for doing so… the after-school teacher made sure she did homework when my daughter had insufficient focus to do this independently; left to her own time management my daughter would have just stayed indoors, alone, and watched TV. In the daycare environment, she had social interaction and outdoor play. The point here being that I made the decision about when she was ready to be responsible for things, and it’s nobody else’s business why, regardless of whether they would have done things differently with THEIR kid(s).
I walked with my daughter to grade school… not because she needed me nearby to successfully and safely navigate the two blocks of quiet suburban neighborhood, but because it was part of our routine. It gave us a few minutes to talk, and it worked for us; and there was an important backdrop… routine is important to children whose parents are divorcing. She could have walked alone, and on occasion when I was needed elsewhere, she did.
.
“people aren’t relying on their own navigation skills anymore. Want to find something, and how to get there? Don’t need to know all the streets or how to find it… just ask your phone, and Google will navigate you right to it, whatever “it” is…”
Yeah, whatever “it” is:
http://us.hellomagazine.com/royalty/2008/04/04/spencer-daughter/
I mean, I’ve never even been to England, but I know Chelsea FC is a London-area team, and I don’t think I’d have gone clear to Yorkshire without noticing something was wrong. But, hey, let’s trust the digital device, it knows everything …
I only picked that one because it was newsworthy enough to be online, but I know people here in Pennsylvania who were going to Mifflin County and ended up in Mifflintown (which is in Juniata County) and another who had a business meeting in Milford (Pike County, way up north) and went instead to Milford Township (near Philadelphia, way down south). Geographical sense and knowledge still matters. As for the digital device, GIGO still applies.
“The point is to have the “kids” be able to operate independently by the time they reach adulthood, meaning it’s ok if they master it at 3 or 17.”
But if you wait until 17 to even start learning adult skills, you’re not likely to make it. Which seems to be what’s happening, more and more.
“Some kids want the independence and seek out a permit starting on their 15th birthday and a license on their 16th. Some kids are more lackadaisical about driving.”
Kids who didn’t fervently want to start driving at 16 used to be breathtakingly rare. Now they’re common. They’ve been brainwashed into leaving virtually everything, like driving, to “the big people” which they’ll never be, or don’t aspire to be.
As for walking your daughter to school, there was a time (probably when you were a kid yourself) when any kid whose father walked her to school would have been relentlessly teased by her classmates as being a baby. Apparently not by (I’m guessing the timeline) around the turn of the century when your daughter was in grade school. I’m not sure that’s progress.
I’m more than a little surprised that there are any boys/men left who are even willing to babysit. Such a person runs the risk that the babysat will falsely accuse him of having molested them, and because so many of us have been brainwashed into believing that children don’t lie about such things, most people would take the child’s word for it, and the babysitter would end up, if not in prison, at least on a sex offender registry for the rest of his life. If I had a teenage son, I would caution him against accepting babysitting gigs unless he knew his client very well and was certain that he wasn’t risking bogus accusations of child molestation. This is terribly sad, but alas, it’s the world we live in. Racial and ethnic profiling are big no-nos, but gender profiling is still okay, as long as it’s only boys and men who are adversely affected.
And speaking of racial profiling… Forty-plus years ago, I had a professor who hired only black babysitters for his black daughter, because he and his wife (both white) wanted their daughter to have “black pride.” As a person of pallor who still clings to the hopelessly old-fashioned ideal of a colorblind society, I would not have gone out of my way to hire a babysitter whose skin color matched that of my child; but they certainly loved their daughter, and that was what they thought was best for her.
I’m still trying to comprehend how she handles playdates/ overnights (though I imagine the later are banned too). I wouldn’t give it a second thought to run out leaving my husband (or teenage son) in charge when the younger kids have friends over. Does she quiz all families like some do about guns? “So tell me, are there any males in your house? If so can you guarantee that all proper safeguards are in place and that they do not have access to the children?”
How exactly would this work?
I wanted to comment on the “no one can touch you where you bathing suit covers” rule. I received a visit from the police when my oldest daughter told her teacher that I touch her where her bathing suit covers. The kids had one-piece bathing suits. When playing in the swimming pool, I would grab her under the arms, where her one-piece bathing suit covers her sides, and lift her up on my shoulders. I let her ride on my shoulders other times too, but since since she wasn’t wearing her bathing suit at those times she didn’t make the connection. I wish there was a better way to word that rule.
Based on her incredible fear of men I’m not sure how she even has children.
What a sad, deprived childhood her children will have. The experiences my daughter has had when she had a male teacher or a male coach have been great and help her to develop a well-rounded view of men – kind of the way children have such a wide range of interactions with adult women; I wouldn’t want my husband and I to be the only adults my children have the opportunity to spend time with of each sex.
” I know people here in Pennsylvania who were going to Mifflin County and ended up in Mifflintown (which is in Juniata County) and another who had a business meeting in Milford (Pike County, way up north) and went instead to Milford Township (near Philadelphia, way down south)”
These examples support what I said… people aren’t relying on their own geographical knowledge anymore. (You don’t need to know how to find anything, but you DO need to know how to operate your navigational system. If you can’t do either one, it doesn’t matter if you have a good navigation system or not.)
“Kids who didn’t fervently want to start driving at 16 used to be breathtakingly rare. Now they’re common. They’ve been brainwashed”
I didn’t get a license until I was 25. Not because I was “brainwashed” into anything, but because insurance is *(#&$^ expensive, and I was self-sufficient from the time I moved out at 17. My daughter didn’t get a license right away at 16, either… because although insurance is a little bit cheaper for girls than for menfolk, it’s still really expensive, and she lived in a bicycle-friendly college town. You’re a little bit condescending to the non-driver.
This next one requires me to quote what I said AND what you said.
“‘The point is to have the “kids” be able to operate independently by the time they reach adulthood, meaning it’s ok if they master it at 3 or 17.’
But if you wait until 17 to even start learning adult skills, you’re not likely to make it.”
On the contrary, if skills are mastered at 17 they are EXTREMELY LIKELY to still be mastered when the child turns 18. Perhaps math works different for you? In my numbering system 17 is less than 18.
100% of my offspring were self-sufficient and living independently at 17 years old. If you want to quibble with me over when and in what order she mastered important life skills, you’re welcome to do so, but will probably not be taken very seriously. If you want to claim that the order and timing of when she learned important skills meant that she wouldn’t have been ready to be independent at 18, I will do whatever the Internet equivalent of laughing directly into your face might have been.
“As for walking your daughter to school, there was a time (probably when you were a kid yourself) when any kid whose father walked her to school would have been relentlessly teased by her classmates as being a baby.”
This is not my experience, but even if it was, I would give two farts in the wind about what other people think about my choices as a parent because… ???
Which seems to be what’s happening, more and more.
Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to babysit for her – there’s a bomb just waiting to go off and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near it when it does. If I was in the social circle of these parents I would not have allowed my sons to go to parties or sleepovers even under 12 because there are messages being given these girls that could entrap any male into a false memory syndrome later in life when they are women under stress. I am concerned about the effect of those messages on these girls accepting a male partner into their life. There seems to go with this message a ‘be wary around men’. Eventually most women do like to find a sexual partner, and wariness does not a warm bed fellow make. Finally, I agree, Lenore, children can be taught to identify an invasion of their body and report it (so long as parents don’t have a hang up about sex talk with children). Often sexual abuse begins with a form of enticement and so a comfortable parent-child sharing everything that goes on in our lives, would bring any at-risk behaviours to light early. Finally, much sexual abuse is made worse by adult reactions, than the actual abuse, and a calm matter of fact de-briefing with the child can go a long way to avoiding lifelong psychological festering.
@James Pollock
“These examples support what I said… people aren’t relying on their own geographical knowledge anymore. (You don’t need to know how to find anything, but you DO need to know how to operate your navigational system. If you can’t do either one, it doesn’t matter if you have a good navigation system or not.)”
Without geographical knowledge (I never doubted many people today lack it), they can “operate” a navigational system perfectly well – enter “Stamford Bridge” or “Milford” into it and then follow the directions – and end up hundreds of miles from their destination. Though I’m not sure the word “destination” is even meaningful to someone without geographic knowledge.
“she lived in a bicycle-friendly college town. You’re a little bit condescending to the non-driver.”
I went to college in the same sort of town, and there were people like your daughter who didn’t have their own car. They were limited in what they could do, and dependent on others. When it was impressed on me I should take a professional licensing exam in Philadelphia (four hours away by car) before graduation, I drove there and took the test (without a GPS I might have followed to Philadelphia, Mississippi instead of the big one here in Pennsylvania). I could go home the occasional weekend without getting my parents to drive up and fetch me. When a class project (making a documentary film) required us to go to the state capital for a day (two hours by car), I was the one who drove us, which was fine with me. I wasn’t the only one in the group with a car, but I had the largest (I think).
“On the contrary, if skills are mastered at 17 they are EXTREMELY LIKELY to still be mastered when the child turns 18. Perhaps math works different for you? In my numbering system 17 is less than 18.”
And Kasey Edwards’s oldest girl is 8, right? She’s got plenty of time,right? Yet you thought Kasey’s girls might have problems when they’re on their own. Was your daughter kept away from all adult male contact (other than yourself) until age 17? I thought not.
My folks had the same idea. They hired a “good girl” who came highly recommended to watch me when I was very young. Turns out the girl had been molesting her way through the neighborhood for years. She was a very sick girl who had been abused by her mother, but because “girls don’t do that kind of thing,” her victims weren’t believed. When someone (my folks) finally DID report the girl, the cops said the same thing. Most of the attempts to at least warn the other families were met with accusations of trying to ruin a “good girl’s” reputation. We had to move.
A much better rule, one my folks employed, was to not ignore instincts/gut reactions. In talking about it, they remembered that when I first met the “good girl,” I threw a right royal fit and didn’t want to be anywhere near her. I wasn’t prone to tantrums and was an extroverted toddler who’d happily climb all over anyone and everyone. My folks decided I had good instincts, and I always met sitters beforehand and if I told my folks someone gave me the creeps, that person was never left alone with me.
(This was all 30+ years ago, now, when the idea of letting a child dictate who she would/wouldn’t spend time with or refuse to hug/kiss someone was pretty radical.)
@Kasey Edwards
“The blanket rule against allowing our daughters to be in the care of lone male adults means that we do not have to make a moral assessment of every man.”
Wrong. You just did make a moral assessment of every man, Kasey.
And some of us have made our own moral assessment of you – but not of every mother.
Great article I must say!!
“Without geographical knowledge (I never doubted many people today lack it), they can “operate” a navigational system perfectly well — enter “Stamford Bridge” or “Milford” into it and then follow the directions — and end up hundreds of miles from their destination. Though I’m not sure the word “destination” is even meaningful to someone without geographic knowledge”
If winding up hundreds of miles away from their destination is “successfully operating” a GPS device for you, then our definitions are substantially different.
“‘”On the contrary, if skills are mastered at 17 they are EXTREMELY LIKELY to still be mastered when the child turns 18. Perhaps math works different for you? In my numbering system 17 is less than 18.’
And Kasey Edwards’s oldest girl is 8, right? She’s got plenty of time,right? Yet you thought Kasey’s girls might have problems when they’re on their own. Was your daughter kept away from all adult male contact (other than yourself) until age 17? I thought not.”
Are you REALLY that dense, or is it that you think I’m unable to tell the difference between “What difference does it make if a child masters skills at 3 or at 17?” and “These two children will not be given an opportunity to master this still until their are at least 18”?
“You’re a little bit condescending to the non-driver.”
I went to college in the same sort of town, and there were people like your daughter who didn’t have their own car. They were limited in what they could do, and dependent on others.”
My mistake. You’re WAY more than a little bit condescending to the non-driver.
Furthermore, you seem to unaware that, if you own and operate a car, you are limited in what you can do, and dependent on others.
When my kids were babies, my father-in-law wasn’t allowed to babysit my kids alone. Not because I mistrusted him, but because he said he had never changed a diaper in his life and had no intention of starting. Now that they’re older, he can watch them if necessary. My kids have played at friends’ houses with the only parent there being the dad, no problem. Most people are trustworthy and I won’t assume that I should mistrust them based on gender.
Children need to know that most people are good. Their lives will be much better for it.
Males are also more likely to have serious traffic accidents. So… does that mean hubby isn’t allowed to drive her and the kids?
Females on the other hand are more likely to get fender benders on parking lots. I guess her husband runs all the errands – on his own, of course.
And since several people mentioned transgenders, how does she even define men? People with a penis? People with a Y chromosome? People who identify as male?
‘Are you REALLY that dense, or is it that you think I’m unable to tell the difference between “What difference does it make if a child masters skills at 3 or at 17? and “These two children will not be given an opportunity to master this still until their are at least 18”?’
Of course, you were so dense you thought I was unable to tell that 18 was greater than 17. My obvious point was that parents are frequently postponing their children’s adult learning until they’re ALMOST 18 with disastrous results. Or worse yet, like the Edwards family, teaching them something they’ll have to completely reverse course on later or end with young women scared to death of men. I thought you actually agreed with that last sentence.
‘If winding up hundreds of miles away from their destination is “successfully operating” a GPS device for you, then our definitions are substantially different.’
That Milford (Pike County) is ‘hundreds of miles away’ from Milford Township (Bucks County) is geographic knowledge, which you said is not needed for people who can operate digital devices. I contend that geographic knowledge is needed to successfully use (not merely ‘operate’) a GPS. And I speak from experience. I’ve entered a destination into my GPS, stared at the map it produced, and said to myself “that’s not where I’m going!”. Maybe I miskeyed something. Maybe someone else (often a website) gave me information wrong in some important detail. But I evaluate what the thing tells me, based on my GEOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE, and I don’t blindly trust it. If I’m ever in England and want to attend a Chelsea FC match, I’m not going to end up in Yorkshire. (I’ve already been to Milford PA, and by intent, but not Milford Township).
“That Milford (Pike County) is ‘hundreds of miles away’ from Milford Township (Bucks County) is geographic knowledge, which you said is not needed for people who can operate digital devices.”
I seem to have survived just fine without this knowledge.
Is it your contention that people who use computer-assisted navigation will always be routed to one or the other of these two places, or is your example one person who was misrouted one time?
“I contend that geographic knowledge is needed to successfully use (not merely ‘operate’) a GPS.”
And it is not. My dad used to say of my mother that should go out the front door of a building, make four consecutive ninety-degree right turns, and be lost. But she does just fine with with a GPS navigation device. My daughter never bothered to learn navigation because for the entire time she’s needed to navigate herself, she’s had Google Maps. Neither one has ever wound up hundreds of miles away from where they wanted to go… maybe that’s a Pennsylvania thing?
If you get one person who wanders the countryside following an electronic device… but just one person… the problem is very likely not in the electronic device. (This is not to say everythign is perfect… there are several known problems with autonavigation systems.(as well as other geocoding errors. For example, there’s this one address that’s in the geographic center of the U.S. that gets all sort of stuff pointed at it because somebody’s geocoding database puts all unknown addresses at the center of the closest geographic unit it can find, and if all it knows is “United States”, it uses the center of the United States. And sometimes seasonal roads get entered into the database as year-round roads. This is VERY frustrating for the people who live there, since there are apparently THOUSANDS of registered sex offenders living there.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/kansas-couple-sues-ip-mapping-firm-for-turning-their-life-into-a-digital-hell/
James Dobson advised against hiring a teen age boy as a babysitter, b/c of the waves of hormones that go thru their bodies and affect their brains.
So it’s a story that’s had legs for a long time.
Now, I had a couple of baby-sitting jobs as a teen. Actually only did boys, wh/ was fine by me. Thinking back, I can’t really imagine trying to babysit a girl. Doesn’t really sound like fun.
Anyway, the one bright spot is that this approach means boys don’t get falsely accused.
“James Dobson advised against hiring a teen age boy as a babysitter”
Don’t ever hire James Dobson as a dogsitter:
http://www.idyllopuspress.com/meanwhile/100/100/
Thanks for addressing what we should be teaching children and how they can be safe. I just hope that if a child does tell, that they are taken seriously because I have heard horrible stories of children not being believed 🙁
>>Anyway, the one bright spot is that this approach means boys don’t get falsely accused.<<
No, Dr. Torch, that isn't a "bright spot," because a blanket rule against male babysitters means that ALL boys get falsely accused, but before the fact instead of after. True, the unwarranted consequence of not getting to babysit, solely on the grounds of having a Y chromosome, is less severe than the unwarranted consequence of ending up on the sex offender registry because of a lie, but that still doesn't make it right or fair.
I think this all has to do with the unfair stereotype that men think about nothing but sex. That all men are like Quamire from Family Guy or Sam from Cheers or you name the womanizing character.
Lenore is right. While men are more likely to molest, the reality is that most people aren’t going to molest and limiting your pool of child care to only women really isn’t doing anything to help your kids and you may be reinforcing negative stereotypes.
“That all men are like Quamire from Family Guy or Sam from Cheers or you name the womanizing character.”
I’m not much of a TV watcher but I’ll bet those characters womanized grown women, not children.
The proper response to this “lady” you would not print, and In doubt many of you could even imagine the words. To say that respect is not amongst them would be far short of reality.
My response, were i asked to babysit, would be, “No, i will not.” When asked why: “I wont babysit for someone who only considered me because of my gender. Thats sexist against men AND women.” I will NOT spare her widdle feewings.
This is bigotry, pure and simple. Replace “men” with “Jews” or “blacks” and that becomes obvious.
Partly this is statistical illiteracy. Yes, men are more likely to be convicted of molestation than women. However:
1) “Convicted” does not mean they did it. This ignores the fact that many women who molest children are not reported, or if they are the response is “The boy’s lucky–I wish I had an older woman do that when I was a kid”. It’s also well established that men under-report abuse across the board, because our culture demeans men who come forward and many don’t believe them anyway. It’s considered good, clean comedy to have a woman kick a man in the nuts; a man hitting a woman is considered vile.
2) Molestation numbers are EXTREMELY low. Yes, more men than women are convicted of molestation. But the overwhelming majority of both sexes do not engage in such behavior.
3) Most abuse of children is at the hands of relatives. By far. So if you’re looking for threats, look at family. (See the first two points above–and remember that family also spends more time around kids, and I’ve never seen the stats normalized for time.)
More significantly, there is a LOT that young boys learn from old men (I don’t know about young girls; I was not one, and cannot speak to their experiences). Old men pass on knowledge to young boys that fathers can’t, because the relationship is different. To deprive young boys of that experience is to stunt their mental development. To do so out of unreasonable fear is simply insane–and to think that you should be praised for it is vile beyond words. There is no significant difference between what these parents are doing and forcing the children to never walk, or to stay on formula until they are 18; it’s unhealthy for the children.
how does she know she can trust her husband, and regardless of how, why can’t she apply the same criteria to other men?
I have to write an essay talking about Thu87ao&#r21e;s belief that a simple life means a fuller life. I need to know what percentage of upper class Americans drinks to an alarming extent. Can anybody help me?
But she still lets her husband near the kids?
I love the way she think n it’s good because it’s hard to tell 4 sum kids n it b d ones close dat do it da most dat u let yo babies go off with n da children might no if they tell they will not get n trouble but might think about wat people have to say about the situation n no dat d ones love dem will kill dem. Just can’t say
I love the way she think n it’s good because it’s hard to tell 4 sum kids n it b d ones close dat do it da most dat u let yo babies go off with n da children might no if they tell they will not get n trouble but might think about wat people have to say about the situation n no dat d ones love dem will kill dem. Just can’t say