The Normal Man
When I was growing up, elementary school teachers were almost all women. Mr. Lall, my Grade 5 teacher, was my first male teacher. Until then it felt like school was a kind of extension of home, only instead of my mother, I had female teachers in charge my life year after year. I know there are several good reasons why women have traditionally dominated elementary school - which I won’t go into here - but there is also no reason why a man cannot be a successful primary school teacher, or a kindergarten or even pre-school teacher. I hope parents would not be suspicious or mistrustful of men in such roles around their young children because I believe that normal men - or, men, normally speaking - like children. Furthermore, I think it is normal for a man to want to be with children, to enjoy them and understand how to take care of them, and to have instincts about what they need. Normal men know how to change a diaper, how to bathe a baby, and how to feed a baby or young child. Normal men know what kinds of things very young children need, what they can and cannot do, and what their stages of development are. Normally, men ought to like children, and we do. So those who say that they do not, or that they do not want to have children themselves are somehow dysfunctional. Maybe they are victims of a culture/cultures that have trained them to distance themselves from normal human social instincts. Or, maybe they are cowing to the learned behavior of denying their natural like of children, because that is what it is, a learnedbehavior. Men have learned not to have, or to deny that they have an affinity for children. But I could be wrong. Me? I like children.