Why don’t more men specialise in care? (Credits: Getty Images)
Why are there so few men entering the caring professions in the UK?
One reader says that the UK lags behind where Sweden was 50 years ago. In the 1960s, he recalls seeing male nannies in parks as they trained to be nannies and nursery nurses, but it seems different in the UK today. Is it stigma, low pay, lack of interest, or a societal perception that men aren’t seen as caregivers?
Meanwhile, readers are diving into the debate on AI’s dark side – it can be taught to save lives or take them, and a simple code error can turn a good robot bad.
And would you consider rough sleeping a lifestyle choice? If it were me, I’d definitely pick a warm bed over a cold tent and Home secretary Suella Braverman doesn’t even want them to have that.
What do you think about our readers’ letters today?
Share your thoughts in the comments.
‘Males, generally, are still not being valued as carers.’
It was good to read about Ike Robin’s experience in training to become a ‘manny’ at the prestigious Norland College for nannies (Metro, Wed).
This had me reflecting on how slow Britain is in recognising the importance of males in the caring professions and, for that matter, the importance of fathers in bringing up their children.
In the late 1960s, I lived in Sweden. There, we would regularly see young men in the parks with small children as part of their training to be nursery workers.
Yet, when my own two older boys were at a nursery in the early 1990s, having a male nursery worker was so rare that when one appeared for a month from an agency, the boys in the nursery were still talking about him six months later.
Ike Robin trained as a ‘manny’ at the prestigious Norland College for nannies and loves it!
The importance of males in the caring professions is undervalued. I have spent 40 years as a social worker and 30 years as a psychologist and, in both, I was always in a significant minority.
As a father of four boys, I chose to share care with my wife and while seeing fathers at the school gates is better than when my children were small, fathers still often find themselves isolated.
At one time I even had to take an employer to court who was trying to force me to work full-time when I said no because I wanted to look after my children.
Britain still has a long way to go to recognise the importance of fathers – they often still have to fight hard within the family courts to gain even 50 per cent custody. Males, generally, as carers are still not being as valued as they were in, for example, Scandinavia more than 50 years ago.
Kevin, Streatham
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Literal gun dogs wasn’t the future we were waiting for surely? (Credits: Getty Images)
Further to the risks and opportunities of artificial intelligence (MetroTalk, Mon). One concern few are talking about is the use of AI in the military.
One expects discussions are taking place within the armed forces and governments of the most stable countries about the morality of an armed robot with facial recognition software.
On the positive side, we can save our soldiers from highly dangerous missions that have little chance of success; on the negative, all it needs is an error in the code for there to be an uncontrollable killer robot on the loose. Simon Jay, Cambridge.
‘The consequences of a ‘Genesis’ flood won’t stop wars’
Santa (MetroTalk, Oct 27) says that rising sea levels will help to stop wars, ‘as all countries would have to focus on how to survive this second Genesis flood’. I don’t mean to be the bearer of bad news but two of the biggest causes of conflict are shortages of resources and mass displacement of people.
Massively increased flooding and drought will cause shortages of basic necessities (like food), while global warming will leave swathes of the world uninhabitable, generating hundreds of millions of refugees.
This means many more wars and with much greater severity. We are already seeing the effects of these factors in Ukraine and Gaza. Ryan Cooper, London
What do you think? (Picture: Metro.co.uk)
‘Businesses need migrant workers but the UK needs more houses’
Businesses want to bring in more immigrants to do jobs. The UK population says there is a shortage of housing, which has made the price of housing go up too much and people can’t make ends meet.
So when more migrants enter the UK that will make the housing shortage worse. Where are those migrants supposed to live and how are they supposed to make ends meet here if many existing UK people can’t do that? The whole idea sounds totally bonkers. D Hartley, Solihull
Suella Braverman’s view on rough sleepers is ‘nonsensical’
Where would rough sleepers even go? (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)
Home secretary Suella Braverman’s suggestion that rough sleepers are making a ‘lifestyle choice’ is nonsensical.
Why is it that the home secretary keeps attacking certain groups of people, including so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ (whom she describes as ‘invaders’); peace protesters (whom she describes as ‘hate marchers’) and rough sleepers, whom she wants to see removed from the streets and even deprived of tents.
I think that I know the reason for her attacks and it’s quite simply this – she lacks common sense and compassion. Al, Charlton
‘My brother-in-law was traumatised after witnessing the Mau Mau atrocities’
Joyce of Tottenham berates the ‘ignorance’ of ‘Caucasians’ over the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya (MetroTalk, Thu).
Atrocities were committed on both sides. The Mau Mau attacked not only white colonialists but black Africans. The Kenyan nationalist leader Jomo Kenyatta described the uprising as a civil conflict rather than a straightforward rebellion. In August 1952, he said: ‘Mau Mau has spoiled the country. Let Mau Mau perish forever. All people should search for Mau Mau and kill it.’ A Martin, via text
My brother-in-law was a young photographer who had to take photos of the atrocities committed by the Mau Mau. It affected him for life and he was never the same afterwards. Irene Heath, Bexleyheath
MORE : Suella Braverman wants to ban homeless people from living in tents
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MORE : Kim Kardashian has done wonders for male nannies like me
In today’s MetroTalk readers discuss the lack of men working as carers. Why hasn’t societal perception towards men in the role changed?
