Dilemma: would you hire a male babysitter?

Think of a babysitter…I’m guessing you just pictured a female. Probably young, a student, and definitely female. Am I right?

In our society we’re much more likely to trust and hire women to look after our children than men.

Recently Redditor Thecoolkid15 posted a new thread describing a conversation with her close friend in which she stated she was considering hiring a male babysitter. Her friend told her not to.

Thecoolkid15 is a parent of three; she has two girls and one boy. All of her kids are under five years of age. Because of her work, she has been looking for a babysitter.

While the working mum found multiple potentials, there was really only one applicant that caught her attention. a 19 year old male. He had worked with children before and had many references to back up his credentials. There was also a female potential, but she had less experience with kids.

"In my mind the decision was obvious,"Thecoolkid15 wrote.

When the Reddit user was speaking to a close friend about how she'd narrowed her babysitter search down to two people - one being male - her friend was shocked.

"She asked me how I could even consider hiring a man to babysit my children," the mother wrote. "In her mind, simply because he was a male, he shouldn't be allowed near kids. This bothered me deeply."

The woman's friends pestered her friend, making sure she'd done background checks on him.

"I told her I had, but retorted that if both applicants were female, would she be asking me all of these things," the mum wrote.

She confidently responded no, and then told the mother-of-three something that completely caught her off guard.

"If you hire that man, he will rape your daughters," the friend blurted out.

Thecoolkid15 said she immediately asked her friend to leave and called the male applicant the next morning to offer him the babysitting job.

A month has gone by and the woman hasn't spoken to her friend since asking her to leave her home. She also says she hasn't regretted hiring this man 'for a second'.

"What bothered me about this whole situation was the fact that just because someone is male and wants to work with children, society instantly raises the red flags," she wrote.

"It's this kind of thinking that is leading less and less boys to pursue careers in fields relating to children. The number of male elementary (primary) school teachers pale in comparison to their female counterparts, and those statistics are even more drastic in fields like child care and babysitting," she continued.

The mum goes on to say that she made her decision, to hire a male, on previous experience and reliable references as opposed to gender.

Thecoolkid15 raises a valid question.

Why is it that we are more likely to want a woman to care for our children?