Men in childcare – Who are we?

When I began working as a teacher in kindergarten back in 1975 I made myself a promise: No matter what happens – this was where I would stay for the rest of my life.

At a semianr in Stockholm in 1977 we were told that men could seem scaring to small kids – it was not natural for us to work in kindergarten and…

As a result of this – naturally we decided to continue!

So – 32 years later I am still working with sixyear old kids. In 1975 – there were quite a lot of men who entered this scene – today very few men are left on the battleground.

The reasons are many : Wages, workload, low status and above all, the communities never dying demand: When are you going to do something REAL with your life?? (Like working at Wall street…)

AS a result of this – most men pretty soon left the the children and ended up as administrators – before they got a “REAL” job. There were few pioneers to look to as models. We had Erik Hauglund in Norway – who was the first man to become a Kindergarten teacher (He did leave school three years before I did).

I guess Bryan Nelson was one of the men on the barricades in the US. The first website – MIC (Men in childcare) was set up in 1992 (by a Norwegian Åge Jakobsen).

The reason for this site was NOT because working with kids was so great – it was because we at the time had a horrible trial going on here – where a man was accused of having sexually molested 32 kids in one kindergarten!

Back then – just saying what you did for a living made people clam up, walk away and start rumors. So to help the men who did lack the experience and had a “thin skin” we used the site to advocate our missions.

Finishing off: Staying in a job for over thirty years does not sound too offensive – does it ? WRONG!

That’s the trap that is set up for us . BUT – if we at the same time are unwilling to update our knowledge we should fine another line of work. After all – we are not standing at a conveyor belt….