CHAPTER 2: Being A Man in the Early Childhood Classroom: Challenging Some Assumptions about Our Roles and Responsibilities

The field of early childhood education is dominated by women in the United States. The U.S. Bureau of Labor (2010) reported that only 3% of preschool and kindergarten teachers were male. This is consistent with other industrialized countries around the world whose percentage of male early childhood teachers ranged from 1–4% (Sumsion, 2005). The literature suggests there are three major deterrents that have kept men from entering the early childhood profession: low pay, low status, and less than optimal working conditions. Unfortunately, there has been a limited amount of research conducted on the small percentage of men who have decided to overcome these barriers and enter the early childhood profession. This chapter is intended to provide a review of the literature previously conducted with male early childhood teachers and to share the lived experiences of a practicing classroom teachers as it relates to the research in order to provide the reader with a better understanding of what it is like to be a man working in Early Childhood Education, a field populated mainly by women.