Malta has caught up with the world in most social problems, and teenage pregnancies are no exception.

Inevitably, in this country, we can go from negligible numbers to alarming numbers at such an accelerated speed it’s like someone has pushed the fast forward button. I have been told that 20 per cent of all births are to unmarried mothers.

We have gone from being terrified of getting pregnant because of the imagined (or real) threat of what our parents would do to us (I can still hear the echo of my father’s “don’t you dare” voice to this day)... to an almost blasé taking-it-in-our-stride attitude. “Mrs Borg’s daughter is having a baby, how sweet, jahasra!”

You might not agree that it’s a good thing for kids to be raised fearing the wrath of their parents, but you have to admit that the possibility of that monumental fury worked as a very good contraceptive for most of us.

Of course, (as the many unwed mother stories on Tista’ Tkun Int have proved) horny teenagers wanting to “do it” have been around since the year dot, and sexual experimentation and petting are as natural as breathing at this age. Previous generations dealt with their urges by simply getting married at a ridiculously young age, restraining themselves as much as possible, or using precautions. For let’s be honest, if you really don’t want to get pregnant, you are going to make very sure that you don’t.

As for those who were already in a relationship of many, many years, the news that the girl had missed her period was not that catastrophic since they were heading for the altar anyway. (They just had to make sure they fuddled the dates a bit and hoped that no one would notice that Junior was born after only seven months.)

But the scenario today is very, very different. When you start talking about 13 and 14-year-olds giving birth, it means that you are also pushing back the age when these kids are starting to have sex. The saddest and most shocking revelation came this week when we learned that the youngest girl to have a child was aged 12. Which means she was only 11 when she became sexually active.

What has changed so much over the last 20 years in our social fabric that we have come to this point?

The social and moral taboos have been removed; even the pressure to get married because of pregnancy has been removed. Although I am not in favour of shotgun marriages or of condemnation from the pulpit, you have to admit that all of those factors probably kept the numbers down. Our strict Catholic upbringing also probably kept most of us in line, but it is patently obvious that even here the Church has ceased to be relevant. I’m going to be blunt: how many blushing brides dressed in white do you think are really virgins when they walk down the aisle?

A more tolerant, liberal approach towards unwed mothers has paradoxically contributed to their increase.

Girls are not getting pregnant after a long, steady relationship but on the first date or on a one-night stand – or so it would seem.

Does dating without “going all the way” still exist or do today’s relationships simply skip the “getting to know you” bits and jump straight into the sack? I often wonder about this when watching TV or a movie – two people fall into bed when they barely know each other without a moment’s hesitation – but then if a few weeks down the line one of them says, “I love you”, it’s considered a big deal. (“Oh my God, he said the ‘L’ word, what should I do!?”) Call me a hopelessly old-fashioned romantic but shouldn’t that, ehm, be the other way around? Shouldn’t sharing your emotions come before the sharing of your body?

So, yes, I tend to agree with those who say the media has a lot to answer for in the way casual sex is portrayed. The laissez-faire attitude of some parents is also disturbing: I’m often taken aback at the kind of programmes under-age children are allowed to watch. (For example, I wonder whether people realise that the glamorous Gizelle prostitutes are being portrayed as some kind of feminine ideal. A mature audience can understand that there is a sordid side to this underworld but what is the effect on the drama’s impressionable young fans?)

Again, all of this is not new... we can all remember being young and wanting desperately to be allowed a glimpse of this exciting, dangerous adult world of programmes and films which were “over 18”. We all wanted to appear older than we were and fought with our parents over wearing high heels and lipstick. As a curious child, I would be aching to overhear “grown-up talk” during those times when we were told to leave the room – it always seemed much more interesting than playing kids’ games. The difference now, I think, is that not so many parents really pay attention to what their kids are being exposed to or whether they have crossed the line into grown-up territory; it’s like it doesn’t really matter.

I often hear conversations about very adult matters taking place in front of young children whose ears and eyes are obviously glued to what they are hearing. When I try and signal “the kids are listening” to the parents, they shrug and say “it’s OK, let them learn, they have to sooner or later”. It’s not just unsupervised media which is making our kids grow up too fast – it’s the way we treat them on an equal footing when they should be allowed to have a childhood.

I feel that children should be protected for as long as possible; that their brief years of innocence should be kept pure – not in the sense that they should be too naïve about the world around them, but that their minds should remain untainted until they reach maturity.

Instead I see young girls who are already cunning and streetwise; who are allowed to dress sexy, which on a pre-pubescent looks distinctly disturbing... 10-year-old girls with tangas showing from their low-cut jeans. They go from playing with Barbies straight into “playing around” in Paceville with no in-between stage. From the artificial atmosphere of all-girl schools they are thrown into a world where they have not yet learned how to have boys as friends rather than “boyfriends”. With their heads swirling with images of romance they meet boys consumed by hormonal lust, and because every message around them seems to be telling them that sex=love, you end up with girls who are still babies themselves, becoming mothers at the age of 13.