OUR TRAGEDY: TRADING CHILDREN FOR DOGS AND DESKS

By Concerned Citizen  

Walk along the promenades of Malta today, and you’ll see it: a nation that’s traded the prattle of children for the patter of paws. Where pushchairs once rolled with chubby-cheeked toddlers, now it’s designer dogs on leads, trotting beside couples too busy—or too selfish—to bother with the mess and magic of raising kids. It’s a scandal, a slow-motion disaster unfolding, and it’s high time we called it what it is: a betrayal of Malta’s soul.

Two generations ago, Maltese families were bursting at the seams—big, boisterous clans where money was tight but love was abundant. Back then, luxury was a foreign word, yet children were everywhere, scrambling over rocky beaches and filling the air with laughter. Fast forward to 2025, and what do we have? A nation of one-child households — if that — where both parents slog away at desks, leaving their precious singleton to be pampered into a spoilt, lonely wreck. The cost of raising a child in Malta has become the excuse du jour, but let’s not kid ourselves: this isn’t about money. It’s about priorities, and Malta has got them backwards.

The statistics are grim enough to make you weep. Mental illness is skyrocketing (i.e., depression, anxiety, you name it) because humans aren’t built to live in isolation, coddled by gadgets and ignored by parents too knackered to care. Loneliness is the new Maltese plague, and it’s no coincidence that it has hit just as families have shrivelled. Where once a child had a gaggle of siblings to fight, play and grow with, now they’re an only, swaddled in cotton wool and misery. Social welfare now picks up the pieces of broken homes: divorce, dysfunction, and despair. We’ve swapped the cradle for the couch, and we’re paying a hell of a price.

And for what? To afford another holiday or a fancier car? To keep up with the Grechs and Cassars down the road? Meanwhile, the seaside strolls are a parade of pooches, not prams. It’s pathetic. Dogs don’t carry on our legacy, argue over Sunday lunch, or give us grand kids to dandle on our knees. They don’t teach us patience, resilience, or the raw, messy joy of unconditional love. Children do that. And Malta’s turning its back on them.

Our fertility rate, among the lowest in the world, poses humongous long-term issues for the country’s population sustainability and economy. Light the abortion match and the social system will blow up like a powder keg. We need a revolution, a return to the days when children were seen as blessings, not burdens. Imagine it: families with three, four, five kids again, tumbling over each other, learning to share, to scrap, to stand up for themselves. More children mean more noise, yes, but also more life, more chances to rediscover the grit and grace that made Malta’s people who they are. They’d bring back community, too, neighbours swapping tales of tantrums and triumphs, not just dog-walking tips. And the mental health crisis? It will ease, because nothing cures loneliness like a sibling to bicker with or a little one to look after.

The government has got a role here: tax breaks for bigger families, a culture that celebrates parents, not punishes them. But it starts with us. Let us stop whining about the expense and start seeing the wealth in a house full of kids. Stop walking the silly dog and start pushing a pram. We’re not just raising children; we’re raising a future, one that’s richer, louder, and happier than the sterile silence we’re settling for now.

Our children are our treasure. Our trinkets and our terriers are not. Let’s fill those seaside paths with pushchairs again before it’s too late.