So will Fabrizio sing this coming Saturday, and it seems the Maltese, with the third highest rate of marriage in the European Union, agree with him!

Today, 15 May, is the United Nations’ International Day of Families, and so Eurostat, as reported in this newspaper last Saturday, has thought fit to regale us with some mind boggling and bending statistics, not least the one which showed that the Maltese are still very much into marrying, despite these awful electricity bills and impending rises in the price of bread.

And this although divorce and remarriage is still not yet allowed! If all the separated couples were allowed to remarry, (those who were so inclined, naturally), we would certainly have the highest marriage rate anywhere in the world, but we are, incredible but true, the only Europeans to not allow divorce and remarriage (though, of course, if you are well connected enough, or well off enough, or lucky enough to have married a foreigner, you can divorce abroad, remarry here and continue to boost our marriage statistics!)

Yet although marriage is still popular in Malta, it is increasingly less so abroad, where a third of all kiddies in the EU are now born out of marriage. We are not very far behind with an amazing one-fifth of all our children born out of marriage. This is partly because of having active sex lives starting younger and younger, partly because you are definitely better off not marrying because you can claim relief and all sorts, and also because many can’t marry their partners who had been previously married, but this is not going to stop them having children.

With this scenario, the well meaning but totally unrealistic abstinence campaigns are doing very little to tackle the reality of very active sexuality among Malta’s teenagers, 20- and 30-something. I was recently told by one of our nicest professors and leading gynaecologists, that cervical cancer which was previously a cancer of older women, is now much more prevalent (in fact increasing alarmingly) among Malta’s 20 and 30 something women. A trend which is apparently partly resulting from our over active, unprotected and promiscuous sex lives, which sadly as ever is worse for women’s health than it is for men’s.

A condom campaign could do a lot to prevent the alarming rise in sexually transmitted diseases, which also leads to decreased fertility, but we continue to bury our heads in the sand and talk and promote only abstinence. Now this may be ideal, that is abstinence before one long marriage, but the authorities do have a far higher moral responsibility to protect our health, and it is disgraceful that our Health Department is not running very strong, use a condom, and continue to use a condom (not stopping after two weeks or the first date) campaigns.

Another amazing statistic is that two thirds of all households in the EU are without any children at all. Sixteen per cent have only one child, 13 per cent have two children and a mere four per cent have three or more children.

Now, I come from a generation where three children was the absolute norm, so life really is changing faster than we think. In Malta we are doing better. Twenty per cent of us have one child, 19 per cent have two and seven per cent have three children. Yet our increasing affluence is increasingly making us think children are too expensive. One recent survey in Britain found that “Britons are putting money and work ahead of having babies…” and even more amazingly, “64 per cent of British men, and 51 per cent of British women think it is more important for women to enjoy themselves than to have children”.

We are also lucky on the housing front apparently. Whereas in Europe people pay 20 per cent of their income, on average, on housing costs, in Malta we still only pay an average of eight per cent of our income on housing and its allied costs such as water, electricity and other fuels.

So we can all safely sing, “I do, I do, I dooooo” along with Fabrizio on Saturday with honesty as we still do like the idea of getting married, we still love having children despite the expense, and all in all our living costs are not that bad.

Well that’s what the statistics say anyway....