The hardest (and most requested) conversation we’ve ever had

0:00Speaker 1:Notification time for any abuse allegation has been cut from seven days to twenty four hours. Can you believe that it was seven days? I'm actually specially so now it's twenty four hours.

0:10Speaker 2:I think it needs to be immediate media and twenty.

0:13Speaker 3:Four hours the serious things that can affect a person's lives.

0:18Speaker 1:Yeah, if even an account of doubt is shown, I think there needs to be a conversation with parents immediately. This podcast was recorded on the lands of the boon Warong people of the Kulin Nation, the land on which we're lucky enough to raise our sons and daughters, always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

0:35Speaker 4:Hello, and welcome to Ready or Not, the show where two mums tried to figure out how to make work work.

0:40Speaker 3:I'm Lou and I'm Lias, and coming.

0:42Speaker 4:Up on today's show, four percent of childcare workers are men. In the news, we've recently witnessed two of the most awful abuse cases this country has seen, and the question nobody's finished asking this is going to be an uncomfortable and challenging conversation to have. But our dms have been absolutely flooded over the last year of questions about the complications and the challenge with male childcare educators.

1:09Speaker 3:And so we're going to have it, but before we do, how are you?

1:12Speaker 2:I mean, I'm good. I've actually got some very lighthearted updates.

1:15Speaker 1:So before we go date, before we go date, which is yeah, I think maybe we need it.

1:19Speaker 3:At the top of it is yeah. So I did that for a reason. It was right.

1:23Speaker 2:A couple of things. Candy claws. If you haven't tried it, please get what are you're doing?

1:29Speaker 1:They are so good. I've used them a million times before. It's obviously not sponsored. I mean, nothing is really ever sponsored.

1:35Speaker 3:We mentioned up top.

1:36Speaker 2:If we mentioned up top, we usually just like it.

1:38Speaker 3:How does it actually work?

1:39Speaker 1:So you just stick them on with some nail glues and then how we targolt it so that it's wrong.

1:43Speaker 2:This is the best part.

1:44Speaker 1:You don't need to because there's like eight hundred different lengths and styles and designs.

1:48Speaker 2:It's so good.

1:49Speaker 3:How do you know what suits the bed of your nail?

1:52Speaker 2:Well, the pack comes with a lot.

1:55Speaker 3:You get a lot.

1:55Speaker 2:There's no elite. I'm sorry, they're so great.

2:00Speaker 3:Love it.

2:00Speaker 2:I've also been using the brand yours only.

2:03Speaker 1:Okay, so it's for sensitive skin and This is not what it's suggested to be used for. But I've been using it as face moisturizer because in winter I get really bad perioral dermatitis. I don't want to go on antibiotic's flight three months to fix it. And I have to say, which I rarely say about brands that fix dematitis, it actually works. It's working, okay, weirdly, so I don't think it's designed for your face.

2:27Speaker 2:But do you know what, I've been using it, and it's.

2:30Speaker 3:An excellent advice on how to use it. Just use it.

2:32Speaker 2:It's really good. One other thing that I want to hit the nail on the head.

2:36Speaker 1:People have been asking me a lot, and I think you're probably in the same boat how I feel about listening back to myself, and I just want the truth to be told that I never do.

2:46Speaker 2:Yeah, I never listened to any of ours.

2:49Speaker 3:I want to get the listener starts up. Yeap, I've stopped listening. I have to listen.

2:54Speaker 1:And I also never listened to any of our trial reels or any of our reels.

2:58Speaker 2:Yeah, and any of I can tell them, Yeah, I don't listen to.

3:03Speaker 3:Any that doesn't really make it.

3:04Speaker 4:Yes, I do listen to the episodes because you always have to really listen to get the nuggets for socials, like for little bits of cut down. But I've been slack lately, and the further we get along this journey, the less I want to listen to myself.

3:17Speaker 3:Yeah.

3:17Speaker 1:So any of those people that think we're both egomaniacs so we listened to ourselves on repeat, we actually don't.

3:23Speaker 3:We should And I.

3:24Speaker 4:Do listen to us on Doubles Food and we're the only people that I listened to on Doubles Fade.

3:29Speaker 1:So I want the truth to be told to that. My last thing is have you got your tickets? Have you bought your tickets to our boot scooting event? Because they're fifty dollars, They come with a T shirt, you get a couple of drinks, you get some good little goodie bags.

3:43Speaker 4:Probably it's not sold out by the time this episode is because it can't.

3:46Speaker 3:It's feeling.

3:46Speaker 1:I mean it is feeling. But there's six hundred spots available through I.

3:49Speaker 4:We've only released the first hundred, but from there we'll see what happened, and.

3:52Speaker 1:We've sold a couple of I would love to see six hundred people there. I would I am one of those people that when there's a bar, I want it. So please get your ticket. It's going to be fun. It's line dancing. I could be eating my words. I can't imagine.

4:06Speaker 3:It's that hard. I can't wait. I'm going to clip this.

4:11Speaker 2:I'm really excited to do it.

4:13Speaker 4:I'm so sy. It's on Wednesday, the twenty sixth of August. We'll put the ticket link in our show notes. It's at the Thornbery Theater where running the event with Ugu Skincare, with Fatuma Denzako from that amazing brand.

4:26Speaker 2:Never being more excited, I'm so excited.

4:29Speaker 3:I love you.

4:30Speaker 4:Put my update in for me. Yes, you want to talk about it? I actually wasn't going yeah, free go. So thanks for coming to my event. Was I had a lovely charity event. This will probably be a few weeks after the events actually happened. Yeah, as it stands, this is the first time we're meeting since that event. And it was an absolute delight to look out and see the sea of women, strangers, friends, all these different people here from a range of incredible women in an event that was called human Kind. So I do an instagram that says this might be the only one, but baby, I have no idea. Everyone's like, can't wait for the next one. I'm like, there isn't the next one at the moment.

5:08Speaker 1:But well, he doesn't give enough herself enough credit. I will say the event was seamless. Everything went off without a glitch. The venue was perfect, it.

5:17Speaker 4:Was beautiful out to Ellison's Studios and Ali from Ellison's Studios.

5:20Speaker 2:Gorgeous catering by Undressed.

5:23Speaker 3:Zoe and Anna real life Angels Undressed. If you need catering, ol there is.

5:28Speaker 2:I think they're fool to be quite honest.

5:30Speaker 3:But actually yeah, I was like, she doesn't need a recommendation.

5:33Speaker 1:It was unbelievable, Lou, the way you corral people together.

5:39Speaker 2:He's just gorge You're proud. It was really nice.

5:42Speaker 4:Thank you so much. It was a great day. Now give me some good news before.

5:45Speaker 2:We good music.

5:46Speaker 1:Yes, so you know the endimitriusis diagnosis way is around seven years right, Fuck that's what it currently is.

5:55Speaker 2:Yeah.

5:55Speaker 1:Now there is a spit test, actual saliva. You spit in a tube. They and it's through a lab and it picks up endometriosis with ninety six point nine sorry, ninety six point six percent accuracy. It's called the z wig Endo test, tested on nearly a thousand women across France.

6:11Speaker 2:The UK just approved it.

6:12Speaker 1:NHS is rolling out now, alongside a second new test that uses sensors on the stomach. It is not yet in Australia yet, but this is the kind of thing that starts overseas and lands here in a couple of years.

6:22Speaker 2:Incredible, amazing.

6:23Speaker 4:I'm actually blown away by very cool, so funny when something becomes a thing, for lack of better terminology, and then you're.

6:30Speaker 3:Like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, that's a fucking good idea. Well I've done them.

6:35Speaker 1:Yes, So we are going to get into a topic that, if I'm quite frank, I have probably wanted to avoid. Yes, but we have been asked about it so many times that we need to have the chat about it.

6:47Speaker 4:Yeah, and we thought we could do it in a very thoughtful way that looks at the issue more broadly, little spectrum.

6:54Speaker 3:Yeah.

6:55Speaker 1:I also think it is about time that we say what everybody is saying behind closed doors, because these conversations are happening daily and it feels like the narrative that is being put forward to media is different from the ones that every day mums are having, So let's do it. A quick warning before we start. This one does touch on child sex abuse cases. If that is not what you are in the mood for today, rightly, so please skip forward the four percent club in men in childcare and the questions that nobody wants to actually finish asking.

7:27Speaker 2:This one is really tricky for me.

7:29Speaker 1:So I have a family, and I have friends, and I have friends' partners who are male teachers, and I also have educators who teach my own kids who are male, who I love and I trust completely. I am not coming at this as an outsider with an opinion. I'm coming at it knowing exactly what is at stake if we get this conversation wrong today. So I really wanted to make sure that.

7:53Speaker 2:We do it justice.

7:56Speaker 1:And this is one of the most requested topics that we have had to date. We have had DMS voice notes so.

8:01Speaker 3:Many yeah people that we know too American.

8:04Speaker 4:It's been oh, I mean, ever since you and I started doing this, we've been gaining.

8:08Speaker 2:This yeah yeah.

8:09Speaker 1:And when we put it directly to my audience this week, I had over three hundred responses in a day for each question. So there's a total of nearly one thousand responses for the questions that I put up, as in people writing into her, and I think it would be remiss not to address them and talk about what people take for say, temperature check.

8:33Speaker 3:The people unfortunately want to talk about it.

8:35Speaker 2:They do want to talk about it.

8:36Speaker 1:So we're going to have to start with the cases, the first being Ashley Paul Griffith. He worked in childcare centers across Brisbane, Sydney and overseas between two thousand and three and twenty twenty two. He pleaded guilty in twenty twenty four to three hundred and seven charges, including twenty eight counts of rape against around sixty children, most of them girls, some as young as twelve months old. He sent us to life with a non parole period of twenty seven years.

8:58Speaker 2:That is absolutely just not long enough in my opinion.

9:01Speaker 1:So his appeal against that sentence was dismissed just a couple of months ago, in June twenty twenty six. This is the part that I find so difficult.

9:11Speaker 2:To talk about.

9:12Speaker 1:He passed every background check that the system required working with children. Check did not stop him nearly twenty years of employment references didn't stop him. He was caught because police found child abuse material on the dark web and traced it back to a Brisbane center.

9:28Speaker 3:Oh my god, that is wow.

9:31Speaker 1:It's hard to even comprehend how something like that could have happened twenty years That's unfathomable. The second one is still going through court, so I do need to be a bit careful with language. This is Joshua Brown, a Melbourne childcare worker. He was arrested in May last year and he's facing over one hundred and fifty charges relating to alleged offending against multiple children at a Point Cook center, plus additional matters.

9:55Speaker 4:It's so alarming seeing the figure written out of about seeing one hundred and fifty charges and what was the other one? Three hundred and seven? Like yeah, being that written down that is so darring.

10:08Speaker 1:But we also need to be realistic. That's what we know about, so it could be far worse. Edicating thing that would be a gray area.

10:16Speaker 3:It's this because.

10:17Speaker 1:Children, Yeah, they can't advocate for themselves at such a young age. Joshua Brown has pleaded not guilty so far, though his own barrister has told the court that he's expected to admit to a significant portion of the conduct. Once legal argument about how it's characterized is resolved, nothing is finalized. Same pattern as Griffith valid Working with Children check, no formal complaints in eight years across twenty three different centers. Police only found him through a proactive operation, not because the system flagged him. These are two of the worst cases in Australia in Australian childcare history, and in both the actual safety system. Background checks, references complaint processes caught nothing.

10:57Speaker 1:What did catch them was luck an unrelated police work. What does that tell you about how much faith we should be putting in a Working with Children check?

11:05Speaker 4:Yeah, which they're so easy to get, Like, they're so easy to get.

11:09Speaker 2:How much faith do you have in.

11:10Speaker 3:The one we logo job?

11:12Speaker 1:Mind?

11:12Speaker 4:I don't remember what I did to get mine, but I did nothing. I went to the post office.

11:15Speaker 1:I will flag though by saying there is a difference because I said the same thing about a Working with Children check for volunteers.

11:20Speaker 3:Okay, and is actually very naive of me. Yeah, okay, So it's different if you're an actually, but I had.

11:25Speaker 2:The same thing.

11:26Speaker 1:I was like, well, hold up a sec I had to volunteer at school and get a working with Children check. I actually thought it was so quick that I took a photo in my robe. Little did I realize that that would be the exact photo that was on my work checks.

11:37Speaker 2:That is how quick it was.

11:38Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so immediately for me, enormous red flag. The other thing I do think to myself is.

11:43Speaker 4:Yeah, even as a volunteer, that's scary, right, You never know who's volunteering with your kids.

11:47Speaker 2:Absolutely.

11:47Speaker 1:The other thing I think to myself is if we're getting working with children checks on people that are perhaps not living and residing in Australia or have lived here for a very long time. Did the systems talk to each other like our our checks see.

12:00Speaker 3:From UK, Like, do you get their history when they come over us?

12:02Speaker 1:Yeah?

12:03Speaker 4:Do that?

12:03Speaker 3:Yeah?

12:03Speaker 2:Do they all talk to one another? That's an interesting I mean, I don't know.

12:06Speaker 1:So before we go further out some of what came back from our followers this week, you and I obviously feel the same way about it working with Children check. I asked my audience what they felt about this. One mom told us that her babies are too young for kere yet, but in the current climate.

12:21Speaker 2:My trust is completely broken. It is horrific.

12:24Speaker 1:Another one said that she's hemorrhaging money on a nanny because she's too scared of this stuff to use a center at all. That's the emotional starting point for a huge number of parents right now, before you even get to policy. I also asked people if they would feel safe if they feel safe with a working with children check, and surprisingly sixty percent said yes and forty percent said no, So it was higher than what I had anticipated. The response from the government around this matter has been enormous, but I have to say I'm not sure if it's in the ways that I think are really going to make a difference. The National Worker Read Start went live in February this year. Every educator has to be on it, one step in the right direction. Personal devices are now banned around kids' incentives. Who's monitoring that is my question.

13:11Speaker 1:They only have service issued phones for the primary reason of taking photos of the kids during the day and providing updates. But part of me still thinks to myself.

13:20Speaker 3:There'd be a way to get that content somewhere else.

13:22Speaker 2:Yeah, and to do what you want with that phone exactly right.

13:25Speaker 1:There is a new offense, which is actually great created that's called inappropriate conduct specifically, so there's a lower bar to act before something becomes criminal.

13:34Speaker 3:That is good.

13:35Speaker 2:That is very good.

13:36Speaker 1:Notification time for any abuse allegation has been cut from seven days to twenty four hours. Can you believe that it was seven days?

13:43Speaker 3:What the fuck? Yeah? Notification time for any what the fuck? Yeap? What like? Child like? Oh? I actually speass.

13:53Speaker 1:So now it's twenty four hours. I think it needs to be immediate media and twenty four hours show series things that can affect a person's lives. Yeah, even an ounce of doubt is shown. I think there needs to be a conversation with parents immediately. Funding can now be stripped from centers that don't meet safety standards.

14:10Speaker 2:Thank god.

14:11Speaker 1:Researchers and the sector have been trying to get more men into early childhood education, not fewer. The argument is that kids, especially boys, are going through their entire early years without ever seeing a man in a caring role. One academic put it as you can't be what you can't see. How do you feel about it when I say it like that? So this is a quote that we always say about women in leadership. But when I put it in that frame around men in educating in educator roles, how do you feel?

14:36Speaker 4:I think that's what makes me so sad, Like moving through what you've presented to me here, hearing these terrifying stories, and then thinking about how defensive I also feel about having men in educating roles, in caregiving roles, in health services, in all of these industries that we know have been predominantly worked in by women, especially the lower level. Like at the high level you start to see men, but at the lowest level in these industries, in healthcare and caregiving, in.

15:06Speaker 3:Educating, it's always women doing that work.

15:09Speaker 4:And I feel so torn because we also know that men abuse women. If we even take children out of the equation, men abuse women at a much higher rate than women abuse men. And so we grow up in this world where women are more scared of men the men are of women, or men may be as skid of women, but in a completely different way, and it makes them act in these physical ways. So I feel really defensive and sad that these horrific stories then paint a broader picture of men in general.

15:38Speaker 3:But then I'm.

15:39Speaker 4:Also like, what do you expect parents to do with this information? When men abuse, hurt, kill at a far higher rate than women do.

15:48Speaker 1:Yeah, this is the hard thing because stats don't lie. And I think the thing that's most concerning is that you've got a start of four percent of overall childhood educators and men, and yet at this point in time, the two cases that are being profiled about abuse are also within that four percent. So it's not painting a pretty picture.

16:09Speaker 3:That's fuck, it's so scary.

16:11Speaker 2:It's really scary.

16:12Speaker 1:There's an advocate, Louise Emmons, who has spent years campaigning specifically to remove men from what she calls intimate care, and this involves nappy changes toileting one on one time. She says publicly that these cases have made her position mainstream again, when for years it was seen as extreme. Where do you sit on that?

16:30Speaker 4:I disagree with that, despite what you presented to me. I think what does that say about what we want men?

16:36Speaker 2:Like?

16:37Speaker 4:What future do we want for men and our little boys that are going to grow up to be men. If we're saying that they can't be in all parts of caregiving, they can't be in the caregiving fold properly, it's challenging and it's confusing. And I don't say that lightly because I'm also like, fucking hell, those two men wouldn't have been able to do some of the things that they did if they were prohibited from doing these things. But I don't know, we can't make blanket rules for the few people that it's actually so complicated. Even as I'm saying this, I'm like, some people will probably be really angry, but I think I personally think that's a really extreme measure that doesn't actually solve the problem.

17:16Speaker 3:What I want to see is like, let's help.

17:19Speaker 4:Raise boys to be empathetic and caring and give men or boys better healthier tools than like, you should be powerful, you should be a man when they're young, so that hopefully this is not as common a thing. Like I'm thinking more men's abuse against women more broadly here because obviously, even as I'm saying this, though, like men abuse kids that are much high rate them.

17:42Speaker 3:Oh, it's so fucking complicated.

17:43Speaker 1:It's so complicated. I think when it comes to nappy changers, the overwhelming response for anyone that is feeling on edge about it or wanting to ask a question to their daycare center is that hundreds of people are asking those questions so that I can't even tell you how many dams I got. This said started like this. I feel bad, but it's so awkward that.

18:04Speaker 2:I have to. I'm embarrassed that I'm even thinking this.

18:07Speaker 4:But they sort of do want men to be out of those those spaces.

18:10Speaker 2:Yeah, or they do want to ask a question.

18:12Speaker 1:And my thing back to them is you should never ever ever feel embarrassed or nervous or worried about asking about your child's care.

18:21Speaker 4:But you and I, I think it's going to be really interesting listening back to this episode when I do the edit for it, because our demeanor right now is so different to how it normally is, and it goes to show how nicetivcated we feel about this because you and I talking differently to the way we normally.

18:35Speaker 3:Yeah, it's true, because it's so complicated.

18:36Speaker 2:It's so complicated.

18:38Speaker 1:I think there is a case definitely for education for educators around visibility and when it comes to changing nappies, my preference would be it should be like a communal time, there should be multiple educators changing nappies.

18:53Speaker 3:That's totally.

18:54Speaker 4:I think that you've just painted something so perfect that it's like sometimes we put the wrong actions to mitigate problem. But it's like, no, there's other ways we can go about this. Yes, Like I get highlighting this.

19:04Speaker 1:I also get his parents, like I don't want my kid walking around a shitty nappy for longer than they need to. But if it's in a center where there's somebody else that needs a nappy change, I don't know. I mean kids always in a nappy tane to be honest. So I'm like, well, can we not get eduk's to be doing it in pairs?

19:20Speaker 4:Yeah, and just to make it more of an open space, like obviously you can always see them from the room, but like I should almost be right out.

19:27Speaker 3:There and just let it.

19:29Speaker 1:Well, this is one of the things that I am going to raise to the structure of a childcare center is so important. So many people overlook it. They do a tour and they think it looks nice. People are happy. No, no, no, can you see everything? What can you see? What did the changing facilities look like? Where are they located? Are they hidden? Are they accessible? Is their glass? Things like that that previously I probably didn't ask enough of. Yeah, I think so front of my mind.

19:54Speaker 4:It's so interesting you say that too, because I even think of, like, if you think of the little person's perspective, like literally physically being lower, it's like, what can they see what makes them feel safe?

20:03Speaker 2:How true?

20:04Speaker 4:You know?

20:04Speaker 1:To get to the next place. Also, truely, I've never thought of Yeah. I also asked my audience or our audience. I mean's all shared, isn't it. And this was around CCTV versus male staff. I asked whether they would feel more comfortable with zero male staff or male staff and CCTV, and resoundingly the response was sixty eight percent chose zero male staff.

20:30Speaker 2:Wow, with the remainder choosing CCTV.

20:33Speaker 1:So I can think that almost at a stage as a society where these cases are so frightening that people are like, I don't even want to risk it. It's not even a risk that I want to engage in.

20:45Speaker 4:And as you say, these people are the people staying those lines with I feel bad. I don't feel good about this. But the news has presented this to me. I see the attacks on women by men in the media every day, and all of this is leading to me feeling pretty scared with the most important thing in my life.

21:00Speaker 3:Yeah, so complicated, It.

21:01Speaker 1:Is so complicated. One mum wrote, and I do really agree with this. Male educators, good ones can be amazing role models if they aren't touching our kids, see what I mean. Even when I read that, I'm like, oh my god, it's such a bie.

21:17Speaker 3:It so low. Yeah.

21:19Speaker 1:Another person flatly said no male educators, and one other person said the male staff can'ty nappy changes or be alone with kids at our center. And I feel completely fine about this, which is basically what Louise Edmund's policy was already advocating for. So it turns out that it's being implemented.

21:34Speaker 4:It's so complicated then, too, because then you're almost like, if I think about the good male educators out there, incredible one, how would they feel that Like they would feel almost demonized about itself. And it's funny because I feel like I'm now doing like the not all men thing, but always a man thing. It's like I'm being like not all men, but I'm like, fuck that keeps men out of caregiving and educating roles because they do they feel put in a corner.

21:58Speaker 2:Do you know what was really surprising.

22:00Speaker 1:I found a lot of people that responded were very much no men in early childhood. But men from prep above interesting and when I think it's when children have more advocacy and can talk.

22:11Speaker 4:What does that say about fucking men as a general collective of society?

22:15Speaker 3:Like that's so, it's yeah, it is sad.

22:19Speaker 1:The other thing that I did see a lot of was exactly what you said. So many people have male educators who are some of the best, most incredible educators with their children, and one of the things that they're saying is they want structural safeguards that they can see and trust. Yeah, it's not the educators like I get, I get CCTV. For me, I'm like, where is that going? What is it missing? Who is reviewing it? I feel like for me, that's far more of a safety concern, I mean, not more of a sac.

22:46Speaker 3:But it's another thing. It's not a solution. It's a exactly retia of a problem. Yes.

22:53Speaker 1:One follower, Emily, told me that her three year old's favorite educator for two years was a man and that they loved that he disappeared without explanation last month, unusual for that center. Her first thought was maybe that something bad had happened to a child.

23:03Speaker 2:How horrible is that?

23:04Speaker 1:It turned out he was just burnt out and on personal leave because of all the negative connotations in the press.

23:09Speaker 3:See that makes me weird.

23:10Speaker 1:I know.

23:10Speaker 3:I feel like he's just doing a good job.

23:12Speaker 2:I know, and he feels so sad about it to take time off.

23:15Speaker 3:That's heavy.

23:16Speaker 1:Her own line to me was, I think this would have been my first assumption for a female educator. If that female educator had taken time off, she would have been like, oh, she must be absolutely fucking wrecked out.

23:26Speaker 4:One hundred percent. And to be fair, I would potentially have that same.

23:30Speaker 1:Thought I was about to say to you. My response back to her was, you're not alone. I genuinely think my thought would have been the exact same, which is terrifying.

23:38Speaker 4:And if I had two educators next to each other, I hate to say it, I hate to say this, but one was a female and one was a male. Yeah, I would always be more suss of the male, right. I wish it wasn't the case, but it is.

23:47Speaker 2:I know.

23:47Speaker 1:Another person made the point, even if the bias is two men, I think it's important for children male and female to have exposure to female and male caregivers. Are day care the bias of women in childcase Anders just perpetuates the societal belief that women raise the kids while men go to work.

24:00Speaker 3:I couldn't agree with that person more.

24:02Speaker 1:Yeah, the other thing which I think is fascinating is this person said her daycare's best incursion is run by a brilliant guy who the kids adore. Then almost as an aside, they have to be so careful to with that that they say there's no hugs, no touching. No, there's a lot of protocols now in place because kids, obviously, I mean mine, are the same with their daycare educators. They run out, they hug them, they're so excited, and because of all that's come out, there is a strict across the board, no hugging, no, like anything that could be seen as you know what, you just.

24:36Speaker 4:Maybe think like Posey's educator, Sarah and Bella are best as friends. She loves them so much and she cuddles them, and I wouldn't feel the same if like a man well educated went to pick her up.

24:45Speaker 3:And that is so like For some reason.

24:47Speaker 1:I feel like I genuinely think we need to normalize these conversations because people are having them.

24:52Speaker 4:And so we can actually come up with a fucking solution, right, yes, because I don't want them out of these centers.

24:56Speaker 1:I don't think that solution correct the solution exactly right. When I ask people how do we combat this? What does it look like? Mostly people said I don't know. A lot of the conversation was around ratios, so ratios of more educators in general in these centers. But my question to that is if we are paying our educators poorly, if their working conditions are horrible, if men have no interest in this profession at all because of the negative conversations happening around it, which is to pay, yeah, not to mention the pay. If the rate at which childcare centers are being built is so fast that there can be no policy around who's owning them and managing them and what it looks like, then what is meant to be the solution?

25:41Speaker 3:And also that does it look like band aid? To me?

25:43Speaker 4:I'm like, this needs to be like fucking federal systemic, Like we need to look more at how men treat women like this. To me, it all comes back to the patriarchy and misogyny. How we treat women. I know in this example, like these are the extreme examples, right, Like these people are sick. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But men are allowed to hurt women, Yeah, and therefore from that is this breeding ground for all of this other shit. Yeah, that women just do on a far less scale, Like I almost want to say they don't do it, but of course they do to an extent, and all these things A band aid solutions like that's not the solution we want.

26:16Speaker 3:We want a world in which this doesn't happen as.

26:18Speaker 2:Much, right, as much or at all?

26:20Speaker 4:Yeah, well ideally, but also but we also do need band aid solutions to make people feel comfortable to even push their kids.

26:26Speaker 3:Through that door.

26:27Speaker 2:And that agreed. So come back to the four percent.

26:29Speaker 1:That number hasn't really moved in years, so that the number of four percent of male educators has been the same for a very long time, and it won't move. If the public conversation right now is should men even be allowed near children? That is the bigger conversation, to be quite frank, that is really happening because no man, considering the profession, is going to walk into that. They're just not Why on earth would you want to walk into an industry where automatically people are looking at you thinking what the fuck are you doing here?

26:55Speaker 4:Imagine like the looks like it genuinely makes probable sick that like good male educators are getting each morning when they get when people walk into their room.

27:04Speaker 1:Oh god, yeah, which means the sector may end up more male excluded, not more accountable. And that's the actual root causes. Understaffing, poor pay, thin oversight, weak background check systems. They are going to stay exactly the same as they were when both of these men walked through the door, because if men just leave the system, the actual would you call it like the like the ecosystem, the ecosystem around childcare, they're going to be like, oh well, now menag gone, it should be fixed.

27:30Speaker 2:There are still going to be problems on.

27:32Speaker 4:Horlingwoods, and it's a much broader issue than men in childcare centers.

27:35Speaker 1:Right, So Griffith passed every single check we have. Brown allegedly worked in twenty three centers with nobody raising a flag. The system did not fail because a man was in the room. It failed because no one was watching closely enough in a system that's underpaid and understaffed enough that watching closely was never really possible. You cannot have eyes on children when they're simply not enough eyes.

27:56Speaker 4:And also, let's not forget that female educators would probably, again with everything I've said in this episode about men hurting women more than women hurt men, a lot of them wouldn't feel even comfortable being suspicious of the man in the room. Yeah, even if they were suspicious, then might not take that up because maybe they're scared of him.

28:12Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly right.

28:13Speaker 1:The four percent question, the safety question feel like the same conversation they do, but they're not. And until we stop treating them as the same conversation, we are going to keep fixing the wrong problem. I think we need to look more holistically at what childcare centers represent, what type of environment we want to be encouraging, and that's a safe environment with secure attachment with the people that most likely have been there for a number of years.

28:40Speaker 2:The staff turnover is such a.

28:42Speaker 1:Huge issue in childcare, and when I look at these two horrific cases, a lot of them is to do with contract work and consistently moving from to center, and that's.

28:53Speaker 2:How they get away with it.

28:55Speaker 1:What are we going to do as a society to encourage good people to stay lone term at centers that care for our children.

29:03Speaker 2:What are we doing?

29:04Speaker 4:It's one of the only times I think I've ever come to here, to sit in these seats with you and been like, the solution.

29:10Speaker 3:Feels so big that I actually don't know.

29:12Speaker 4:Yeah, I don't know, but like I've ideas, but none of them I can even formulate to you.

29:16Speaker 1:Yeah, which is a type of segment and say we don't know because we both actually don't, But we also did think. We wanted to give space to people who are having these thoughts because I personally have been flooded, flooded with DMS around it. And as women and as mothers, we shouldn't feel shame in asking questions of who is looking after our children, and we also shouldn't feel judged for having an opinion that the data supports. Yeah, I'm sorry, I hate to say it.

29:48Speaker 4:Yeah, And we still think it's a fucking complicated beast and we don't like it, which is why we've avoided this conversation because we both don't believe that male educators don't have a spot in our system.

29:57Speaker 3:We just don't know what the fucking solution is.

29:59Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly right, So that is all we have time for today. We might do a second part, or that felt so heavy. I'm almost strone and never want to talk about this again. I'm sure it will pop up. But if you have love today's episode, if you have thoughts feedback, if you feel like you were heard or seen, or your thoughts are validated, please leave us a message, leave us a review, and we will see you next week