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Early Child Development and Care


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Who is the odd man out: men in early childhood settings?


Margaret Clyde
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University 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 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300443890520107

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Who is the odd man out: men in early childhood settings?


MARGARET CLYDE

University of Melbourne, Victoria

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Australia has, on the whole, been slow to react to many of the more innovative or welfare-oriented programs for young children and their families in the past two or three decades. We can speculate about this in terms of geographic isolation, natural caution or a population which is not appropriately tuned to the needs of parents with young children. Whatever the reason, Australia appears to be slow to respond to changes in attitude. One of the major potential areas for change in attitude is the employment of males in early childhood settings. The history of the United States, which thirty years ago appeared to totally reject the notion of men working with young children, now records a substantial move towards encouraging males and females to assume androgynous roles in children's services. It is interesting to note that this contemporary view has flourished in spite of the lack of empirical evidence to support previous notions relating to the role of male teachers and caregivers in terms of providing male models for fatherless children, offering more appropriate teaching strategies to young boys and providing examples of more tolerant caregivers for exhuberant boys. While evidence suggests that prejudice still exists in U.S.A. about male teachers in early childhood settings, the androgynous philosophy appears to point the way in which early childhood services in Australia must go in order to provide a more balanced program for all young children.

Keywords: Early childhood, male teachers - caregivers, androgyny, role models, 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 in philosophical, psychological and social trends in the English-speaking world in general and in Australia in particular. The Head Start program of the middle 1960's and 1970's left Australia largely unmoved. Only a handful of enterprising and motivated groups in universities attempted to utilise the burgeoning literature from North America for the purpose of establishing similar models of early childhood programs based on less traditional models in order to provide an integrated health, education and welfare program for so-called disadvantaged children and their families. 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 and sustained changes in philosophy, process and program planning. Similarly the need for centre-based long day care was a1 need which remained largely unrecognised until the early 1970's when, as a result of three federal government enquiries and a massive injection of federal funds, centre-based child care became more of a reality for parents who wished to place their children in long day care in a government-subsidised and government-regulated and monitored centre. While supply has not been able to keep up with demand, particularly in the area of care for infants and toddlers, child care is increasingly recognised as an important part of the range of children's services offered to Australian parents. More recently occasional care and out of school hours care for older children have attracted the attention of governments at the federal and state levels, with various degrees of interest and financial support. The majority of Australian states and territories have recently enacted, or are in the process of preparing legislation, to give tangible support for "quality care" 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 a few. While such regulations compare more than favourably with other English-speaking countries such as England and Wales, Canada, the United States and New Zealand, they fall short of the concept of almost total support offered to parents of young children in many areas of Scandinavia. While it could be argued that Australian tax payers per se would not tolerate the high tax deductions (up to 78% of wages) which operate in Sweden and therefore the Australian system is at best a compromise between the socialist and free enterprise system encouraged in some other English-speaking communities, we can only speculate about another philosophical 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 early childhood settings. In some states of Australia, for instance, men are not permitted by law to operate as family day care givers (that is people who are licensed to care for up to four or five children at any one time in their own home on a regular basis) while the percent-age of male teachers in classes for children aged five, six or seven years reached a peak of about 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 in Australia with only one teacher for up to twenty children aged five to twelve years are staffed by a male. This concept of males in early childhood settings, and the lack of male workers in Australia, seems to point up a further area of traditional conservatism in early childhood services. While there is a disconcerting lack of interest or positive speculation on this position in Australia, it would be true to say that in other countries, including the United States and England, there has been an increasing interest in, and awareness of, the need for a more equitable balance between males and females in early childhood settings, just as males have been encouraged to join other previously female-dominated professions including social work and nursing. However, it is necessary, at this stage, to examine evidence to support the notion that male models as opposed to female models can serve a useful purpose in terms of

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the children's development in early childhood settings, before making value judgements about what is obviously a somewhat contentious subject. Over a long period of time parents, teachers and psychologists have made frequent and intense demands for more male teachers at the early childhood level, that is in the areas of child care, pre-school, kindergarten and the first few grades of the primary school. (Gold, 1978). In fact Bailey (1983) has asserted that male involvement in early childhood programs is not a product of contemporary thinking and values. He asserts that Frederick Froebel, the father of the kindergarten movement, had all-male staff for his original kindergarten in 1837 and that women were only admitted to the fold after Froebel's own marriage! While we can speculate about the reasons for Froebel's change of attitude, the fact remains that for the last century or so, early childhood education has been perceived as primarily the domain of women. This assertion was reinforced by instructions and directions which were issued at various times. It is not so long ago that males were prohibited in the U.S.A. from teaching at the 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 policy of the school system to place men only in the upper grades in their chosen subject fields so that such work will come to be characterised as the work for men. Women should appear as out of place 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 the 1950'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 class of kindergarteners. He would immediately become suspect." (Robinson, 1981, p. 27) This curious debate apparently assumed a different direction in America in the 1960's and 1970's in that a reason was sought for permitting men to work with young children because of the positive contribution males could make to the profession. As a result, two schools of argument have emerged to support the inclusion of males in the early childhood field. One, known as the traditionalists, wants to reinforce traditional sex-role norms, the other labelled not unsurprisingly as the nontraditionalists, base their 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 a concern 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 the early childhood developmental process. These include preventing children from perceiving school as a female-dominated institution, improving school performance and classroom atmosphere for boys, acting as a counter-balance for "urbanisation" and "family disintegration problems", providing masculine role models for boys, preventing juvenile delinquency and finally changing the image of the early childhood profession itself.

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However research which has been undertaken to support these assertions does not shed any real light on the topic, mainly because the subjects have been too few, the variables too many and most research lacked a clear theoretical basis of child behaviour 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 role models it has been argued that for young boys who are trying to evolve a sex-role differentiated from that of females, contact on a daily and prolonged basis with male teachers should serve to help clarify their concept of the masculine sex-role. In addition, since children are generally reinforced for imitating same-sex models, male models should also give boys more opportunity and inventive to imitate a male operating in an academic setting. However young children do not characteristically select the model whose sex matches their own; the sex of the model is less important than the sex-appropriateness of the modelled behaviour relative to the observer. This may be due to the fact that male teachers are not usually concerned with providing an example of particularly masculine behaviour, but rather are more concerned with their role as an early childhood professional providing examples of values and behaviours 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 low levels of positive interaction with the father who is "inadequate". Therefore the argument is that men should be encouraged to work with young children on the assumption that there is a difference in young boys' adjustment, achievement and attitudes when taught by a male rather than a female teacher. AH these views, and many more, appear to assume either explicitly or inexplicitly that male and female teachers differ in basic characteristics and teaching styles in such a way as to make 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 active behaviour of the boys as well as in assisting the boys to achieve masculine sex identity. Some educators have argued that female teachers favour girls by demonstrating unreal expectations of boys' behaviour. However, few studies suggest that male teachers and female teachers treat young children differently although it could be asserted that male teachers may positively affect boys' perceptions of spatial relations. Brophy and Good (1974) have summarised the literature by concluding that male and female teachers treat young boys and girls similarly. More recent studies also support this position. Robinson's work in child care centres supports the view that male and female child care workers' personality, characteristics and methods of reinforcing children's behaviour are similar. It may be that other factors are more important, and that common sense has indeed 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 the basis of positive development of gender concepts or attitudes towards self, school and life, the 1980's have brought a new argument for men to play-a significant role in early childhood 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 with young children. The blending of both conventional masculine and feminine traits into one personality, encapsulated in the androgynous concept, seems to offer the young child a balanced program because an androgynous adult has the psychological freedom 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 in disproving the idea that men need act in some special 'manly' way." (Seifert, 1973, p. 171). Downloaded by [Curtin University Library] at 14:53 25 February 2013 Notwithstanding this, men and women will behave differently with young children. Men, by their own preferences, may choose more messy experiences, more "rough housing", more activities with trucks, more physical interactions than do many women, but they would still be fulfilling their role of providing a variety of ways of meeting the young child's social, emotional, cognitive and physical needs. (Robinson, 1980). This androgynous balance should permit all early childhood educators to perform 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's learning environment, we should be encouraging involvement of male teachers and care 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 work with young children in a predominantly caring situation in which the majority of their working colleagues would be women. Seifert (1974) has suggested that other staff may perceive 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 the field or nursing supports this view. In recent times male nurses have run the gauntlet of suspicious and threatened people in a predominantly female occupation. The problem however is deeper than mere superficial assertion because such attitudes could interfere with the potential effectiveness of both male and female early childhood workers. In the United States of America, Siefert (1974) attempted to gauge the attitudes of practising early childhood personnel to the concept of men entering the early childhood 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 that women enter it? 2. Do we believe that men entering the field of early childhood need the same personal 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 long as we expect women to do so? 4. Do we expect men entering early childhood to have> the same problems that women have? Seifert's questionnaire described two mythical people, "George Smith" and "Linda Smith". Both were aged twenty-one, both had recently completed an early childhood qualification. Respondents had to answer the four questions as they perceived they related to George and Linda. The differences in the responses were both interesting and startling to members of the profession: 1. 2. 3. 4. George George George George would would would would need less of a desire to earn a living (than would Linda). need more love for children to succeed (than would Linda). need more desire to change the centre or junior school. need less friendly support from his colleagues (than would Linda).

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It is clear from the results of this small, female American sample, that the early childhood profession appears to be biased in terms of its expectations for new teachers and caregivers in relation to their gender, and generally in ways that would discourage men from working with young children. In fairness to the respondents, it could be assumed that some of the attitudes embodied in the responses seem to be derived from cultural attitudes such as the premise that women, more than men, choose the early childhood profession to facilitate the co-ordination of work and family life; that men do not require such good rapport with their colleagues; that men are more successful in preschool or the lower primary school grades if they keep moving around (at the expense of concern for the children 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 words men have to like children more or, for them, the early childhood field would not be worth the hassle! To this writer, experience has demonstrated that all these conditions prevail in Australia at the present time, even in these times of supposed gender equity. However, the most insulting comment is that, in the main, early childhood professionals do not expect men to interact sensitively or skillfully with either children or colleagues. In a profession which prides itself on demonstrating a high level of interpersonal skills and establishing caring, supporting environments for all participants, Seifert's assertions sound a clear alarm bell for the early childhood profession to either develop strategies to sort out this apparent anomaly or to run the risk of being found guilty of gross hypocrisy. Hopefully the early childhood field in Australia will not act with characteristic trepidation and slowness but will move positively towards the development of an early childhood profession which accepts men and women in terms of their commitment and capacities to provide a supportive, nurturing environment for the young child. Unfortunately history does not provide us with a convincing precedent.

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References
Bailey, Trevor (1983), "Men as Teachers of the Young", Australian Journal of Early Childhood, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp 27-29. Brophy, J.E. & Good, T.L. (1973), "Feminisation of American Elementary Schools", Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 54, pp 564-566. Gold, Delores & Reis, Myrna (1978) "Do Male Teachers in the Early School Years Make a Difference? A Review of the Literature", Quebec, ED 171 387. Gold, Delores et al (1977), "Male Teachers and the Development of Nursery-School Children", Quebec, ED 145 965. Gordon, Tom & Draper, Thomas W. (1983) "Icabod Crane in Day Care II: Teachers' Concerns about Male Caregivers", Utah, ED 229 123. Lee, Patrick C. & Wolinsky, Annie Lucas (1973), "Male Teachers of Young Children: a Preliminary Empirical Study", Young Children, Vol. 28, No. 6, pp 342-352. Riley, Mary Tom et al, (1985), "The Male's Role in Early Childhood Education", Institute for Child and Family 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 Early Childhood Teachers", Young Children, Vol. 35, No. 5, pp 27-32. Robinson, Bryan, E., Skeen, Patsy & Flake-Hobson, Carol, (1980), "Sex Stereotyped Attitudes ofMale and Female Child Care Workers: Support for Androgynous Child Care", Child Care Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 4, Winter pp 233-242. Seifert, Kelvin (1974), "Perceptions of Men in Early Childhood Education", ED 125 756. Seifert, Kelvin (1978), "The Best Men for Child Care Work", Child Care Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 3, pp 188193.

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