Recent statistics show that the number of births out of wedlock has increased to 19.14 per cent in 2004 when compared to 1.71 per cent in 1990. Last year alone 765 out of 3,860 babies where born to unmarried mothers. It would be interesting to know how many of these 765 were born to teenage mothers and were a first pregnancy and how many were born to older women who were already single mothers.

It is common knowledge that very often society condemns girls who get pregnant out of wedlock. And with the benefit system that we have in Malta, some people are finding it easy to point fingers at single mothers, accusing them that they are choosing single motherhood so they can milk the system.

As time goes by one would assume that girls are becoming more adventurous in their ambitions and rather than becoming a mother they want to do more exciting things. After all, what’s so exciting about changing nappies?

However these ambitions come with education and I’m afraid this is where we are lacking. While motherhood will remain one of the most fulfilling careers that a girl can have, in today’s world it is important that a girl gets her priorities right and she first needs a good education so she can sustain herself and her family when the need arises.

Over time we had various campaigns aimed at young people but as Maltese we somehow always end up arguing among ourselves rather than working towards finding the right balance.

Experience has taught me that I should believe a girl who says that she didn’t know she could get pregnant or another who says she wanted to get pregnant but didn’t know it was going to be this hard bringing up a child on her own.

The government is already doing a lot to help single mothers. It does result from various research that single parent families are the most susceptible to fall below the poverty line. Both the Family and Social Solidarity Ministry and the Education Ministry, through the Employment and Training Corporation, are doing their best to provide these families with adequate housing, social benefits and training schemes so that they can get on their feet and continue with their life.

But this leads me to take a look back to way before a girl gets pregnant. During the early teenage years various factors compete for the attention of young girls and boys. Because we seem to forget that for a girl to become a single mother there must have been a boy somewhere.

On one hand there’s the media, peer pressure and all that’s nice and exciting, telling them that they’re missing out and that they’re ready to have sex and on the other hand there’s us, the parents. We may think we are at the prime of our life but for our children we sound old fashioned and conservative.

Therefore a good balance through a sound education system is a must. Unfortunately we have a gap in our education system. We, as parents, together with schools and youth centres should teach our children proper sex education. They should be taught about the repercussions of sex, and pregnancy is only one, as there are others such as sexually transmitted diseases.

And here I must point out that teaching our children to be responsible has nothing to do with the Church or religion. Those of us who embrace the Catholic teachings must then teach our children Catholic values but those who don’t must still teach their children the basic values of responsibility and respect.

Young people must be taught to respect themselves and their partner and to be responsible for their actions. If we think that these values are old fashioned and they’re something that my mother believed in way back in the 1960s or that they are what the priest preaches on a Sunday morning then we are missing the whole point.

I am not the expert here who should come up with the right recipe how to get the message across. But as a parent myself and as a woman who not so many years ago was facing the same dilemma that my daughter will be facing in the near future I strongly believe that prevention is better than cure. A good investment in education to educate young people is worth much more than all the benefits put together that a single mother can claim. Nothing is worth the hardship that a woman goes through bringing up a child on her own.

Michelle Mallia is president of the Nationalist Party Women’s Movement