Men are now moving towards engaging in more child care within the family structure. This is not yet adequately reflected in early childhood education, in teacher recruitment, and in most district employment practice. Society continues to evolve, men are more actively engaged in caring for their own children; yet the early childhood workforce seems stuck in the 1970s family model.
During their formative years of early learning and development, children 0-5 years are placed for up to 50 hours per week in childcare environment for education -- in an almost exclusively female environment. Children's time with adult males and their contact with positive male role models in the family/community is thus reduced. This is exacerbated with the high rate of divorce in the developed world, and the fact than many children grow up with no male figures in their lives (Sumison, 2005).
Most early childhood programs have goals of teaching children to be non-sexist in their attitudes, behaviors, and choices of play activities, sports, and friends. The composition of the workforce that these children observe does not meet these criteria.
Women have more career choices open to them, thus are not always inclined to teach at the preschool or elementary level. It is more difficult...
The clustering of women in a narrow range of traditionally female-intensive lower-paying occupations has been noted to be a problem by government agencies concerned about women's equality and status in their work. But there is also a lack of awareness of the negative consequences of the early childhood profession, in particular, continuing to be strongly protected for females (Farquhar, et.al., 2006).
As noted, males teaching young children, even grades 1-3, is a relatively rare occurrence in contemporary education. However, since the 1960s, traditional gender-based practices have been questioned more and more, partially due to a more egalitarian workforce and cultural bias, partially as a backlash to the feminist movement. The study under review was launched in 1998 with several objectives: 1) to provide a more robust understanding of the issues male students experience when enrolling in early childhood programs; 2) to provide a support network among males who have already
