I'm living in Sweden, moved here some years ago. Beforehand we lived in Ireland, which has a similar attitude to America with regard to this type of thing. In my son's creche, and most others I can think of in Ireland, the teachers/carers were all women. When we moved to Sweden, the creche we put or our three year old in had two women and one man in each class of about 15 to 20 kids.
At first my reaction was kind of "wow, guys looking after toddlers", it was no big deal, it just surprised me a little. I don't know why, social conditioning most likely.

Anyway, after some time I had the realisation, from watching the kids in the creche when I went to collect my son, and how they reacted with the male teachers. There is DEFINITELY immense value in having male teachers/carers looking after kids in creches, you simply don't realise it while it's missing. But my kids male teacher is amazing fun, my kid (and the other kids) absolutely love him. He's the one who's boisterous, he seems to acknowledge the kids in a way the female teachers don't, the women teachers take on the traditional motherly role, but the fathers role is generally missing from day care, 10 hours a day for my kid, which is a long time to not have a male role model.
Now, this is definitely not to be taken in terms of men are better than women, or women are better than men. But how male teachers and kids interact is different to how female teachers and kids interact; it's really difficult to explain, but there's definitely a difference and there is definitely added value in both sexes contributing to that environment as opposed to just women.

If I had more kids I would make a point of ensuring the creche we put them in had both male and female teachers/carers.