Nigel Parsons, while I understand there is some kneejerk idiocy about men caring for young children, here the main reason there's a long tradition of few men in childcare has always been payscale. The very large daycare where I worked for almost 25 years made continued efforts to hire male caregivers, since a lot of the children had no dad and we felt more male role models would be a good thing. We never managed to get men that we hired (with two exceptions) to stay very long. The work was too intense and the pay was too low. If a man was smart enough to work with kids, there was always a job with much better pay that he could take, in construction or elsewhere.