When it comes to mental illness and all manner of disability, when it comes to colour, sex or race we are now very aware of using language that does not create false barriers and perceptions, that do not increase our biases and prejudices unnecessarily.

We are now not meant to talk about madness but illness, (or probably some other label) nor about disability but impairment.

Yet when we are talking about single parents, “is-single parents” as they are so often referred to here, are we not creating another stigma, another barrier?

Lets consider the Maltese situation first of all.

There are, in fact and in reality, far fewer single parent families around than we imagine. I mean single parent in the true sense of the word. A few, thankfully only a few, do of course lose a parent through accident or illness but many of those families we label single parent, or more importantly of those children we label as coming from a single parent family do not in fact do so.

These kids have two parents who have contact with them, so what is the label of single parent actually achieving, except of course in some cases easy access to social security?

There are also a minority of dads, and rarely mums, who do abandon their kids and have no contact with them. This is perhaps more commonplace in large European countries, but in Malta those parents who refuse any contacts with kids, or who abandon them, or give them no financial support whatsoever are not as commonplace as the label “single parent” implies.

In a small country like Malta many of these children do have some contact and support from their dads. Their dads exist. Their dads are named on the birth certificate too, unless the name is deliberately not put there for one reason or another, sometimes because the intention is deliberately to claim as much social security as possible.

These kids, the ones who carry the single parent label as much as their mums have to, or many of them, do in fact have two parents and know their two parents, so let’s get rid of this awful label. Awful for many of the mums, even worse for the kids who, for all their lives, will have to say they came from a single parent family…even though dad was in fact very present.

In Malta this is particularly worrying because we sadly and unfairly don’t allow divorce and remarriage, so very often there is no opportunity for mums (or dads!) to remarry even if they want to. Basically if you marry here and hubby or the wifey goes off with someone else, you end up with that label all your life.

The dad or mum who keeps the children and brings them up with all the responsibilities we know that entails, is in fact the one who ends up with the stigma. The one who leaves, or has to leave because of unreasonable behaviour, and doesn’t look after the kids full-time escapes scot-free without a label (!) while the one who is the nurturer, the giver, the child-rearer in the main…unfortunately and inadvertently ends up with the label, as do the kids.

It all seems wrong.

Of course there too are a growing number of single parents caused not only by marriage or serious relationship breakdown but because of sexual activity in the young which is unprotected. Here both parents are in fact just young teens, and these children are often brought up in the extended Maltese family, or with very close support from them. There are, in fact, a minority who have no such support, and who have to manage on their own. Sometimes these kids come from seriously dysfunctional families and, often, social services and whole raft of support has to come in.

But these are a minority. While there are some girls who find no support from their families when they are pregnant and no partner is in sight, it is rare for the family to totally turn their backs, although one must remember that some kids (those who have been in foster care to name one obvious example) may have no real family in the way we understand that word.

We read lately that last year 700 babies were born to single parent mothers. Now if these were all teenage pregnancies from one-night stands in Paceville, we would have a worrying social trend. But I doubt the figures reflect that kind of picture. I wonder how many of these really were single parents?

Presumably the midwives at St Luke’s have the best idea of how many babies are in fact being born to mothers who are solitary, where the dads are as good as unknown or don’t want to know.

This single parent trend deserves further study and analysis, particularly in terms of implications for social policy and how we spend our taxes.

Is there a sub-culture which is happily taking on the label single parent as a way of accessing social benefits? And are we, as a society that does not allow remarriage or a second marriage, actually encouraging this trend?

Remember, the man or woman who leaves will, if they are young enough, start another family. By not allowing remarriage or a second marriage we are actually creating more single parent families statistically if not in reality, and are we perhaps also encouraging more state dependency and financial immorality? 700 single parent births a year is no blip.

It is a reflection of very rigid family values, and definitions of family, that are no longer working as they did before.