The purpose of her visit over, a charming young woman shyly and politely asked whether she could speak to me about a subject totally unrelated to her visit. As patients outside grumbled at having to wait beyond their allotted appointment time, I listened to what seemed to be really worrying her.

She wanted to know whether her nine-year old daughter was possibly suffering side effects from a medicine she was taking for epilepsy. She revealed that her daughter was frightened of going to sleep and cried every night and, at the age of nine, that seemed very unusual to the mother. I was very struck by this woman’s very visible concern, so I shut my ears to the grumbling going on outside my surgery and sat down to talk.

My first attempt at a provisional diagnosis led me to ask whether this fear could be school related. Does she look forward going to school, I asked? Yes, was the answer, she is very intelligent and does well at school. The mother said this with an obvious degree of pride. I then went on to enquire about the young girl’s character: whether she was one to relate rather closely to sad events with which she came into contact. The mother informed me that her daughter was very kind-hearted but that, as far as she knew, she had a nice teacher who got on very well with the children and nothing untoward had happened. Then I decided to go for a straight diagnostic question: Did she display her symptoms on Saturdays and Sundays, i.e. when children have no school to attend? The frustrating answer was that the weekend made no difference – the symptoms persisted. It was time to change tack.

Is there anything wrong at home, I asked? The answer I have come to dread came tumbling out. The woman was a single mother and her daughter was effectively being brought up by an aunt. I took a deep breath and asked what the age of the aunt was. Prompt came her answer: “She is in her eighties.” As my mind was trying to register what sort of life a lively young girl of nine could be leading with a relative in her eighties, I was informed by the grateful mother that she considered the aunt to be almost a saint.

So now the situation had changed slightly to a nine-year-old girl living with an 80-year old saint! Before I could remember whether I had ever read anything that told us how elderly saints reacted with young children, the woman went on to assure me that it was not the lack of a father that hurt the girl. Well, I said to myself, surely living with an ancient aunt and occasionally being visited by the father cannot possibly be damaging to a girl in our modern age, can it? That is, after all, what we are constantly being told.

So I ventured to ask whether the girl ever expressed herself on the subject; did she ever say she missed her father, for example? The answer was of course she did. But she just couldn’t stand the constant bickering whenever her father visited. He tended to blame it all on the parent she was familiar with and not the one whose occasional visit provided that something different to life’s routine.

The woman added that the girl often tells her that she wished her parents had never met. That was a significant statement. Was the young girl saying she wished she had never been born? Was she saying that a life lived with a hard-working mother and an elderly aunt did not meet her needs? I was beginning to understand the situation a little better.

But, worried as I was about the daughter, I was equally concerned about the woman in front of me, a mother who was doing her damnedest to give her daughter the best she could in the circumstances. My thoughts went out to the ever-increasing number of families breaking up and the suffering of all concerned. That was when snatches of news I had hurriedly read during the week rose up from the depths of my subconscious:

“Teenage pregnancies and single motherhood have become almost a norm and most GPs would admit that whereas a decade-and-a-half ago one would perhaps have seen a handful of ‘unwanted’ pregnancies, nowadays one sees at least one or two cases a month” wrote Prof. Pierre Mallia in this paper.

“3,413 babies with ‘unknown fathers’ in 12 years”, screamed another headline last week.

“All children deserve a home not a house”, declared an editorial in another local paper.

A total of 467 cases of domestic violence were reported between January and October but the figure did not fully represent the problem in Malta, declared Justice Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, while calling for action to be taken.

Action is certainly called for. And that action does not simply demand money being thrown at the problem, a solution that seems to be very much in vogue nowadays. We need to understand and uncover the causes of the man-made virus that is destroying what we once held so close to our hearts and what made our people survive a history of domination and colonialism: the family. The family, like the motto of the three musketeers in the romantic novel by Alexander Dumas, should be “all for one and one for all.” That is the way it used to be, but much of it has now been lost in favour of “all for me and only me.”

Far too many individuals now conceive the family as a unit where individualism, utilitarianism and hedonism reign supreme, where, as our Bishop put it, “economic efficiency, inordinate consumerism, physical beauty and pleasure” seem to be the ends to which human activity should aspire.

In Azzjoni Nazzjonali’s election manifesto, we suggested ways and means of strengthening the family. Unashamedly, we proposed that the woman who prefers to stay at home and bring up her children before thinking of work or career needs to be financially supported to do so. This is a far cry from the accusation of wanting to keep women at home. Neither am I trying to absolve men from their parental duties.

That is why we insisted that a thorough study of the causes undermining the basis of our society should be carried out and solutions suggested. We even suggested an institute for that specific purpose. After all, people don’t come to me as a doctor simply to be told what they are suffering from. They want to be helped back to health. I think it best to leave the last word with our Bishop:

“This [situation] calls for new ways of thinking and acting based, first and foremost, on a well-studied and sound diagnosis of today’s challenges accompanied by a unified commitment in the service of the Church’s mission to the present generations, especially the young.”

Dr Josie Muscat

Leader Azzjoni Nazzjonali