I ran across this interesting article today: Do boys make good babysitters?
A few key points:
Only through talking to other moms did I become aware that our choice to hire boy sitters was considered controversial, if not outright naïve — and it wasn’t because males are less nurturing or less trained as caretakers. Online forums reveal an army of parents and professionals who draw a hard line against male sitters, suggesting that boys never be allowed to babysit: “The sex drive in teenage boys is too strong,” says one detractor.
Does this potential for abuse mean all teen males should be ruled out as babysitters? Society frowns upon profiling — be it racial, gender or anything else — so how has this judgment against male babysitters become not only pervasive, but acceptable in our culture?
While the incidence of babysitter molestation is higher for boys than girls, it’s important to note that, according to the 2001 issue of the Juvenile Justice Bulletin, only 4.2 percent of reported crimes against children under 6 were committed by caretakers while 53.5 percent were by family members. Strangers also surpassed sitters in crimes against young children.
There’s another stereotype out there I’m sure you’ve seen: The girl babysitter that spends the entire night on the phone with her friends while watching TV and essentially ignoring the kids she’s there to watch. How is this an improvement? As the article goes on to explain, you need to carefully screen anyone who watches your kids, regardless of gender.
This really is an unfair slam against boys. Are we really supposed to believe that boys are out-of-control animals? And even if that were true, how is bombarding them with that assessment supposed to help? If that’s what you tell them they are, then what incentive do they have to become anything else?
We sweep it under the rug by convincing ourselves that boys aren’t interested in babysitting anyway. And perhaps many aren’t. They’d rather make their money working fast food or mowing lawns. But many girls aren’t interested in babysitting, either, and these days it’s hard to prove they’re any less sex-obsessed.
Why do we stigmatize boys only? We tell boys they’re little better than animals or rapists-in-waiting, and yet what are we doing for girls? We’re making sure they can get free birth control, abortions on demand, and mounting campaigns against “slut-shaming”. What message is that sending, exactly? That we want them to be just as bad as we’ve convinced ourselves boys are? Well, if we really want to “correct” that inequality, then let’s go for the whole package and stigmatize girls as unfit to babysit, too.
That’s not the world I want to live in, but at least we’d be more “equal”, which is clearly more desirable than sense these days.