Who is the Odd Man Out

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Who is the odd man out: men in early childhood

settings?Margaret Clyde

a

aUniversity of Melbourne, Victoria

Version of record first published: 07 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Margaret Clyde (1989): Who is the odd man out: men in early childhood settings?, Early Child

Development and Care, 52:1-4, 93-99

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Early ChildDevelopment an d Care, Vol. 52, pp. 93-99 1989Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, Inc.Reprints available directly from thepublisher Printed in Great BritainPhotocopying permitted by license only

Who is the odd man out: men in earlychildhood settings?MARGARET CLYDEUniversity of Melbourne, Victoria

Australia has, on hewho le, been slow to react tomany ofthe more innovative orwelfare-oriented programs foryoung children andtheir families in thepast twoor three decades. We canspeculate about this in terms ofgeographic isolation ,natural caution or apopulation which is notappropriately tuned to theneeds ofparents with young children. Whatever the reason, Australia appears to beslowto respond tochanges inattitude. One of the major potential areas forchange inattitude is theemployment of males in early ch ildhood settings.The history of the United States, which thirty years ago appeared to totallyreject thenotion of men working with young children, nowrecords asubstantialmove towards encouraging males and emales to assume androgynous roles inchildren's services.It is interesting to note that this contemporary view hasflourished inspite ofthe lack of empirical evidence to support previous notions relating to the role ofmale teachers andcaregivers in terms of providing male models for fatherlesschildren, offering more appropriate teaching strategies to young boys andproviding examples of more tolerant caregivers forexhuberant boys.While evidence suggests that prejudice still exists in U.S.A. about maleteachers in early childhood settings, the androgynous philosophy appears topoint the way n which early childhood services inAustralia must go in order toprovide a more balanced program for all young children.

Keywords: Early childhood, male teachers - caregivers, androgyny, role m odels,gender identification, self concept

WHO IS THE ODD MAN OUT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD SETTINGS?Early childhood education, has, traditionally been slow to react to changes inphilosophical, psychological and social trends in the English-speaking world ingeneral and in Australia in particular. The Head Start program of the middle 1960'sand 1970's left Australia largely unmoved. Only a handful of enterprising andmotivated groups in universities attempted to utilise the burgeoning literature fromNorth America for the purpose of establishing similar models of early childhoodprograms based on less traditional models in order to provide an integrated health,education and welfare program for so-called disadvantaged children and theirfamilies. Similarly Home Start and the Follow Through projects have, in the main,been treated with studied indifference, and Australian early childhood educators

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could be accused of adopting a Luddite mentality in the face of quite substantial andsustained changes in philosophy, process and program planning.Similarly the need for centre-based long day care was a1 need which remainedlargely unrecognised until the early 1970's when, as a result of three federalgovernment enquiries and a massive injection of federal funds, centre-based childcare became more of a reality for parents who wished to place their children in longday care in a government-subsidised and government-regulated and monitoredcentre. While supply has not been able to keep up with demand, particularly in thearea of care for infants and toddlers, child care is increasingly recognised as animpo rtant p art of the range of children 's services offered to Australian pa rents . M orerecently occasional care and out of school hours care for older children have attrac tedthe attention of governments at the federal and state levels, with various degrees ofinterest and financial support. The majority of Australian states and territories haverecently enacted, or are in the process of preparing legislation, to give tangiblesuppo rt for "qua lity ca re" in terms of prescribing such things as the size of the centre,the ratio of adults to children, and the ratio of trained to untrained staff, to name afew. While such regulations compare more than favourably with otherEnglish-speaking countries such as England and Wales, Canada, the United Statesand New Zealan d, they fall short of the concept of almost total su pport offered toparents of young children in many areas of Scandinavia. While it could be arguedthat Australian tax payers per se would not tolerate the high tax deductions (up to78% of wages) which operate in Sweden and therefore the Australian system is at besta compromise between the socialist and free enterprise system encouraged in someother English-speaking communities, we can only speculate about another philoso-phical area of children's services which Australia has been reluctant to embrace,namely the notion that men and women should share the nurturing roles in earlychildhood settings.

In some states of Australia, for instance, men a re not perm itted by law to operate asfamily day care givers (that is people who are licensed to care for up to four or fivechildren at any one time in their own home on a regular basis) while the percent-ageof male teachers in classes for children aged five, six or seven years reached a peak ofabout two percent in the last decade, but appears to have levelled out since that time.This is a curious situation when we consider that in most cases, small schools inAustralia with only one teacher for up to twenty ch ildren aged five to twelve years arestaffed by a male.This concept of males in early childhood settings, and the lack of male workers inAustralia, seems to point up a further area of traditional conservatism in earlychildhood services. While there is a disconcerting lack of interest or positivespeculation on this position in Australia, it would be true to say that in othercountries, including the United States and England, there has been an increasinginterest in, and awareness of, the need for a more equitable balance between malesand females in early childhood settings, jus t as m ales have been encouraged to joinother previously female-dominated professions including social work and nursing.

However, it is necessary, at this stage, to examine evidence to support the notionthat male m odels as opposed to female models can serve a useful purpose in terms of


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the children's developm ent in early childhood settings, before m aking value jud ge-ments about what is obviously a somewhat contentious subject.Over a long period of time parents, teachers and psychologists have made frequentand intense dem ands for more m ale teachers at the early childhood level, tha t is in theareas of child care, pre-school, kindergarten and the first few grades of the primaryschool. (Gold, 1978). In fact Bailey (1983) has asserted that male involvement inearly childhood programs is not a product of contemporary thinking and values. Heasserts that Frederick Froebel, the father of the kindergarten movement, had all-malestaff for his original kindergarten in 1837 and that women were only admitted to thefold after Froebel's own marriage! While we can speculate about the reasons forFroebel's change of attitude, the fact remains that for the last century or so, earlychildhood education has been perceived as primarily the domain of wom en. Th isassertion was reinforced by instructions and directions which were issued at varioustimes. It is not so long ago that m ales were prohibited in the U.S.A. from teaching atthe early school grades. This quote sums up the position in 1947:"Men should not be asked to play nursemaid to young children ... it should be made the policyof the school system to place men only in the upper grades in their chosen subject field s so thatsuch work will come to be characterised as the work for men. Women should appear as out ofplace in such assignments as men are now in the lower elementary grades."(Kaplan, p. 368, in Robinson, 1981)

The thinking that men did not belong in the early childhood field prevailed in the1950's and is epitomised in the following quote:"One could hardly imagine a situation in which a man would be in his element teaching a classof kindergarteners. He would immediately become suspect." (Robinson, 1981, p. 27)

This curious debate apparently assumed a different direction in America in the1960's and 1970's in that a reason was sought for permitting men to work with youngchildren be cause of the positive contribution males could make to the profession. As aresult, two schools of argu me nt have emerged to support the inclusion of males in theearly childhood field. One , known as the traditionalists, wan ts to reinforce traditiona lsex-role norms, the other labelled not unsurprisingly as the nontraditionalists, basetheir argument on the need to loosen and change the traditional sex-role norms.

The traditionalists, who predominated in the 1960's and early 1970's, expressed aconcern that the female-dominated early childhood years would result in "feminised"boys. Numerous assertions have been made relating to the male's positive role in theearly childhood developmental process. These include preventing children fromperceiving school as a female-dominated institution, improving school performanceand classroom atmosphere for boys, acting as a counter-balance for "urbanisation"and "family disintegration problems", providing masculine role models for boys,preventing juvenile delinquen cy an d finally changin g the image of the early childhoodprofession itself.


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However research which has been undertaken to support these assertions does notshed any real light on the topic, mainly because the subjects have been too few, thevariables too many and most research lacked a clear theoretical basis of childbehaviour and gender identification and development. (Gold et al, 1977)

"Arguments and research in this area have not attempted to fit into a theoretical context,relying mainly instead on common sense, an alluring but sometimes untrustworthy guide."Several examples should serve to emphasise this point. In the area of sex rolemodels it has been argued that for young boys who are trying to evolve a sex-roledifferentiated from that of females, contact on a daily and prolonged basis with maleteachers should serve to help clarify their concept of the masculine sex-role. Inaddition, since children are generally reinforced for imitating same-sex models, malemodels should also give boys more opportunity and inventive to imitate a maleoperating in an academic setting. However young children do not characteristicallyselect the model whose sex matches their own; the sex of the model is less importantthan the sex-appropria teness of the modelled beh aviour relative to the observer. Th ismay be due to the fact that male teachers are not usually concerned with providing an

example of particularly masculine behaviour, but ra ther are m ore concerned withtheir role as an early childhood professional providing examples of values andbehaviours that are suitable for both boys and girls. (Siefert, 1975)Boys in particular are thought to suffer from the absence of the father figure or lowlevels of positive interaction with the father who is "inadequate". Therefore theargument is that men should be encouraged to work with young children on theassumption that there is a difference in young boys' adjustment, achievement andattitu des when taug ht by a male rath er th an a female teache r. AH these views, andmany more, appear to assume either explicitly or inexplicitly that male andfemale teachers differ in basic characteristics and teaching styles in such a way as tomake a measurable, qualitative difference to their effect on children. (Gold, 1978).Further it has been claimed that female teachers cannot teach boys as well as male

teachers can. Male teachers are thought to be better able to cope with the more activebehaviour of the boys as well as in assisting the boys to achieve masculine sexidentity. Some educators have argued that female teachers favour girls by demon-strating unreal expectations of boys' behaviour.However, few studies suggest that male teachers and female teachers treat youngchildren differently although it could be asserted that male teachers may positivelyaffect b oys' perceptions of spatial relation s. Brophy and Good (1974) have sum ma r-ised the literature by concluding that male and female teachers treat young boys andgirls similarly. More recent studies also support this position. Robinson's work inchild care centres supports the view that male and female child care workers'personality, charac teristics and me thods of reinforcing children's behav iour aresimilar. It may be that other factors are more important, and that common sense hasindeed been, to use Gold's phrase, "an alluring but sometimes untrustworthy guide".

(Gold , 1978, p. 6)


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Despite lack of evidence to support the presence of males in early childhood on thebasis of positive developmen t of gender concepts or attitude s towards self, school andlife, the 1980's have brought a new argument for men to play-a significant role in earlychildhood services, namely that young children will learn that men can be nurturing,loving and understanding just as women are perceived to be. (Riley el al, 1985).This androgynous approach, adopted by the nontraditionalists of the last decade,provides the most professionally viable reason for encouraging men to work withyoung children. The blending of both conventional masculine and feminine traits intoone personality, encapsulated in the androgynous concept, seems to offer the youngchild a balanced program because an androgynous adult has the psychologicalfreedom to engage in whatever behavior seems most effective at the time."The males' special contribution would consist not in 'acting like a man' for children, but indisproving th e idea tha t men need act in some special 'manly ' way." (Seifert, 1973, p. 171).

Notw ithstand ing this, men an d wom en will behave differently with young children.Men, by their own preferences, may choose more messy experiences, more "roughhousing", more activities with trucks, more physical interactions than do manywomen, but they would still be fulfilling their role of providing a variety of ways ofmeeting the young child's social, emotional, cognitive and physical needs. (Robinson,1980). This androgynous balance should permit all early childhood educators toperform their role more comfortably and possibly more competently. It follows then,that although we cannot put every young boy in a male teacher's or care giver'slearning environment, we should be encouraging involvement of male teachers andcare givers in early childhood education, until a more equitable balance prevails.

First, we in Australia need to examine the reasons why men would want to workwith young children in a predominantly caring situation in which the majority of theirworking colleagues would be women. Seifert (1974) has suggested that other staff mayperceive the male as entering the early childhood profession for the "wrong" reasons,such as promotion and idealism. This is not difficult to believe as evidence from thefield or nursing sup ports this view. In recent times m ale nurses have run the gau ntletof suspicious and threatene d people in a predo mina ntly female occupation. T heproblem however is deeper than mere superficial assertion because such attitudescould interfere with the potential effectiveness of both male and female earlychildhood workers.

In the United States of America, Siefert (1974) attempted to gauge the attitudes ofpractising early childhood personnel to the concept of men entering the earlychildhood field. Two hundred professionals, who were affiliated with NAEYC,responded to a questionnaire designed to answer the following questions:1. Do we expect men to enter early childhood for the same reasons tha t women enterit?2. Do we believe that men entering the field of early childhood need the samepersonal qualities for success that women need?


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3. Do we expect men to persist in working in daily contact with children for as longas we expect women to do so?4. Do we expect men en tering early childho od to have> the same prob lems thatwomen have?

Seifer t' s questionnaire described two mythical people, "George Smith " and "Lin daSmith". Both were aged twenty-one, both had recently completed an early childhoodqualification. Respondents had to answer the four questions as they perceived theyrelated to George and Linda. The differences in the responses were both interesting and star t l ing to members of the profession:1. George would need less of a desire to earn a l iving ( than would Linda) .2. George would need more love for children to succeed (than would Linda).3. George would need more desire to change the centre or junio r school.4. George would need less friendly support from his colleagues (than would Linda).

It is clear from the results of this small, female American sample, that the earlychildho od profession app ears to be biased in terms of its expec tations for new teachersand caregivers in relation to their gender, and generally in ways that woulddiscourage men from working with young children.

In fairness to the respondents, it could be assumed that some of the attitudesembodied in the responses seem to be derived from cultural attitudes such as thepremise that women, more than men, choose the early childhood profession tofacilitate the co-ordination of work and family life; that men do not require such goodrapport with their colleagues; that men are more successful in preschool or the lowerprimary school grades if they keep moving around (at the expense of concern for thechildren is the usual unwritten implication of this premise); and finally that men,more than women, need a " love of children" to ensure their success. In other wordsmen have to like children more or, for them, the early childhood field would not beworth the hassle!To this writer, experience has demonstrated that all these conditions prevail inAu stralia at the present tim e, even in these times of suppo sed ge nd er equ ity.However, the most insulting comment is that, in the main, early childhoodprofessionals d o not expect m en to interact sensitively or skillfully with either childrenor colleagues.In a profession which prides itself on demonstrating a high level of interpersonalskills and establishing caring, supporting environments for all participants, Seifert 'sassertions soun d a clear alarm bell for the early childhoo d profession to either developstrategies to sort out this apparent anomaly or to run the risk of being found guilty ofgross hypocrisy. Hopefully the early childhood field in Australia will not act withcharacteristic trepidation and slowness but will move positively towards the develop-men t of an early childhood p rofession w hich accepts men an d wo men in terms of theircommitment and capacit ies to provide a supportive, nurturing environment for the

young child. Unfortunately history does not provide us with a convincing precedent.


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ReferencesBailey, Trevor (1983), "Men as Teachers of the Young", Australian Journal of EarlyChildhood, Vol. 8, No. 4,pp 27-29 .Brophy, J. E. & Good, T.L . (1973), "Fem inisation of American Elemen tary Schools", Phi D elta Kappan,Vol. 54, pp 564-566.Gold, Delores & Reis, Myrna (1978) "Do Male Teachers in the Early School Years Make a Difference? AReview of the Literature", Quebec, ED 171 387.Gold, Delores et al (1977), "Male Teachers a nd the Development of Nursery-School Chi ldren", Q uebec,ED 145 965.Gordon, Tom & Draper , Thomas W. (1983) "Icabod Crane in Day Care I I : Teachers ' Concerns aboutMale Caregivers", Utah, ED 229 123.Lee, Patrick C. & Wolinsky, Annie Lucas (1973), "Male Teachers of Young Children: a PreliminaryEmpir ical Study ", Young C hildren, Vol. 28, No. 6, pp 342-352.Riley, Mary Tom et al, (1985), "The Male's Role in Early Childhood Education", Institute for Child andFamily Studies, Texas, ED 266 863.Robinson, Bryan E. & Canaday, H.A. (1977) , "The Male Caregiver : Hero, Humanist and Handyman",Dimensions, Vol. 5, pp 113-116.Robinson, Bryan E. (1981) , "Changing Views on Male Ear ly Chi ldhood Teachers", Young C hildren, Vol.35 , No. 5, pp 27-32.Robinso n, Bryan, E., Skeen, Patsy & Flake-Hobson, Carol, (1980), "Sex Stereotyped A ttitudes ofM aleand Female Chi ld Ca re Workers: Suppor t for Androgynous Chi ld Care", Child Care Quarterly, Vol. 9, No.4, Winter pp 233-242.Seifert, Kelvin (1974), "Perceptions of Men in Early Childhood Edu cation ", ED 125 756.Seifert, Kelvin (1978), "The Best Men for Child Care Work", Child CareQuarterly, Vol. 43, No. 3, pp 188 -193.

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