The place and function of the gender of child psychiatric carers

Abstract

In a child psychiatry unit, where it is said that men are reassuring and women are mothering, the group experience of carers on the function of their gender in child care was explored. Gender is relevant to institutional care, but creates a divide. Representations focus on fear, sexuality, violence and fragility. Caregivers, ambivalent about neutralising gender, suffer from representations of what it does to children and to the institution.