You know the picture? A Maltese 17-year-old male finally staggers downstairs for some nourishment after a 3am finish in Paceville. Mother patiently doing housework quietly so as not to wake him up. He sits at the table. Breakfast cereal is brought out, poured out and prepared. Being exceptionally well brought up and from good stock, boy might grunt in acknowledgement. Mum chatters on asking her beloved “primogenito” (first born and a male thankfully), what he might like for supper that night and goes on with her service-to-others day, fully-prepared, as so many of my female friends do, to have a total of three different suppers ready by evening, one for hubby, one for son and one for her ailing mother up the road.” Mammoni”, men who are very close to their mothers are, not surprisingly, quite common here as they are prevalent in our Italian neighbouring towns and cities.

With this kind of domestic slavery is it really so surprising that so few women work outside the home in Malta?

And more importantly are Maltese women right?

Are Maltese women voting with their feet and not voting for a life of expensive childcare, work drudgery and the plain exhaustion which is the hallmark of most working mums who do not have an extremely helpful, and available 24 hours a day, mum and/or mum-in-law to share all the burdens of childcare and housework with them?

What is better, to do this, just the mothering, husbanding and housework and to do it well, or to behave like your average typical British housewife who is far more likely to work outside the home too, for precious little reward, acknowledgement or improvement in her quality of life? That typical British woman is working outside the home, doing at least three quarters of all the housework anyway, and most of the childcare, which includes all the worrying, organising and ferrying. It is what experts are calling the triple burden of modern women. Is it worth it?

Many British women are cracking under the strain and looking enviously at some of their home-based sisters, and perhaps with good reason.

A new report into parenthood, presented at the British Household Panel Survey found that even among British men, who are not typically known as “mammoni”, that the new man who shares the housework and parenting is about as rare as our kindness towards immigrants stuck on tuna pens. Increasingly, therefore, British working women are voting with their feet, and stopping procreating anyway after the first child because too much really is too much. Most nice men, including “mammoni”, would cheerfully admit that they would find the average working day outside the home of a married or unmarried working housewife with two or three children utterly impossible unless there is a mum or a Filomena in tow.

Those women manage and manage well. I have worked easily because I have been blessed with very helpful parents so I know how lucky I have been, and wouldn’t dare patronize non-working Maltese women. But I know of very few others who do, particularly when the children are younger, because in reality the burden of extra lessons, extra studies and exams makes certain time of the year unbearable for working women of older children too. Today Maltese mums are expected to do as much as our parents did, and in fact much, much more.

Women, it seems can’t win, and Maltese women may have, in some senses, and for all the wrong reasons like traditional upbringings, Catholicism and the like. They look at their lifestyles. They look at how well they look after their sons and husbands and they decide they are not also going to squeeze a working day in the factory or office into all this too. They want to go on looking good. They want to have the time in the day to do their nails, their hair, and the myriad of other things Maltese women do to look exactly like each other and who can blame them?

What is on offer instead? Waking up two hours earlier every day? Catching up with housework late at night or on the weekend? Having the same equally demanding hubby, and sons and daughters still expecting the same service when they are so tired? New men don’t exist in the UK either, according to this survey, so what chance do we have here in Malta?

And perhaps before expecting new men to come along we would first have to try being new women.

And it is amazing how many of us let our sons get away with much more than our daughters in the helping out stakes. Daughter is expected to help mum and son just isn’t, at least in most of the households I know. This is fine as it far as it goes, but what happens when one of our university educated daughters meets one of these sons who is used to having everything done for him? Can this relationship survive years of cosseting by Maltese mothers? Are Maltese mums currently and continually doing a disservice to their own daughters?

How much don’t we fundamentally really like women who work, women who succeed, women who are bolshy, women who are men really? Now there’s a sexist assumption if ever there was one. Mammoni, Maltese or otherwise will no doubt continue to rule until far, far more of us quit hanging around waiting for new men and become new women.

Trouble is when we do that we just get replaced by another generation of beauties from whatever economically poorer country has women desperate enough to prefer domestic slavery to the miserable life they have. Women get replaced by more domestic slaves from other countries if they do not toe the line. We have had the Russians (not all I know, please don’t email me about how clever you are, not economically desperate, not a pole dancer etc. and how perfect your wife cum girlfriend is!), we will have others…and feminism and new women never ever really had a chance.

[email protected]