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Originally Posted by BonitaAppleBomb
Even more reason to say absolutely not. Until my child can effectively articulate his thoughts to me, he will never be kept by a man...solo nor in a daycare. I have no problem with him having a male teacher once he begins elementary school because my son would be more independent and articulate at that point than he is as a toddler. This paired with the fact that he'll be around a group of other people-male and female-and not just one man.
And I don't think any of us forget the crimes that women commit against children, they're just not as common as the crimes men commit against children. At least not from what I can see anyway. I personally can read a woman's intentions better than I can a man's intentions; therefore, I'll always trust a woman's care over a man's care when it comes to my child.
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I think we hear about them less because people talk about it less. The idea of the abusive woman/mother just goes against the grain of our wonder-mom narrative that we have in our culture, but the bad-dad is a really common cultural stereotype. People are less likely to report abuse from a woman/mom/wife/sister, etc. than they are from a man.
I once did a story about incest perpetrated by women, and it was shocking to learn how often this happens. One of the commons among victims is that many of them felt like they could NOT come forward with this kind of abuse because it would be LESS BELIEVABLE to others. The idea of a woman molesting a child goes against our basic concepts of "mother/woman" in a whole different way than it does when we think about men doing the same thing.
To the second bolded: the worst abusers are the ones you'll least expect because they are masters at hiding their intentions. To think you can pick up on the intentions of someone who has genuine intent to harm - either male or female - is foolhardy. Don't get me wrong, I believe in intuition and going with your gut, but most people who have had children abused or injured or even killed by caretakers will tell you that they trusted that person completely and they even have a hard time believing the person did what they are accused of.
This is one of those things to me that sometimes our "automatic response" has to be examined because it isn't necessarily fair or valid.