Men in childcare - where are we now?

Five years ago, I wrote my first blog about men in childcare. It was prompted by a LEYF male colleague, David Stevens who said we should not just concentrate on increasing men into childcare at LEYF (eight per cent of LEYF workforce were male) but open up the debate.

At the time he was managing a nursery with four male staff out of a team of five. People were amazed and we received lots of comments about men in childcare which both reflected a positive approach and the usual stereotyped anxiety that men saw as a barrier to entry. These included poor pay, lack of promotion opportunities, poor status, fear of accusations of abuse and paedophilia, discomfort at working in such a highly female work environment and an expectation that one man can address the shortfall of positive male roles in so many children's lives. In fact, reading the list, one would wonder why any man wanted to work in the sector?

We decided to stop asking others and ask the men themselves. "Why do you want to work with children?" Despite the range of age and backgrounds, the overwhelming response was that they had all come into childcare because they were interested in child development and wanted to teach small children.

In the wider world there was more happening. The Daycare Trust, now rebranded as the Family Childcare Trust, brought interested organisations together with the support of the DfE. However, unlike Europe where Manner in Kitas received 14 million euros for theory-based research into the benefit of men in childcare, we were doing it for the usual barter and free gratis approach.

To move this forward, we did two things. With the support and encouragement of many male and female colleagues we launched the London Men in Childcare Network on the 19th of November 2012 which is International Men's Day. We set ourselves some targets: