The gap between men's and women's roles in the home appears to be narrowing. That fathers are expected to be present at the birth of their children - whether they faint or not - is actually old hat. An increasing number of dads have even grasped the knack for changing nappies and honed their culinary skills.

Many of those who categorically refuse to lift a clean diaper, let alone a filthy one, do not shirk from childcare or house chores. Haven't you noticed how fathers outnumber mothers at school bus stops in the morning? It's a totally different picture in the afternoons when mothers, grannies or childminders take over.

Shift-parenting is now the norm in today's young Westernised families, meaning that couples take it in turns to juggle careers and look after their children. Flexitime, childcare facilities (still rare in Malta) and the wholesale dumping of babies, toddlers and young children on grandparents plus the growing opportunities to work from home lubricate the wheels of city and suburban life. Whatever hang-ups parents may harbour about the immediate world their children are growing up in is hardly an issue anymore. I am not glossing over the stress and possible feelings of guilt involved. But the more I listen and look at parents, the more I see these feelings stifled by a social fabric that irons out any returning to the days of traditional families.

To begin with, the vast majority of newlyweds say "I do" to a life-strapping house loan. So unless they happen to be plush in the pocket, or come into a windfall, they simply have no choice but to be employed. The financial drain surges with the bills to eke out a reasonably comfortable daily existence and gushes with a vengeance if parents have opted for private schooling. There is also the trend for parents to buy loads and loads of stuff for their children, satisfying their every whim partly as a backlash to their more frugal childhoods, partly to assuage guilty consciences over the banality of quality time and also to vie with relatives and friends. They don't seem to realise that their offspring, being typically human, want more the more they get. Meanwhile, the explosive combo of materially spoilt and emotionally starved children is exacerbating immunity to discipline and authority.

I have no intention of romanticising the fading memories of "fathers work and mothers stay at home" scenarios. This was precisely the kind of set-up where married women paid the price of running a household with their mind-numbing, blood-corroding frustration. The exceptions being those well off enough to send the children to boarding school and getting a life at the cost of missing out on real family bonding.

Decades, centuries earlier don't present much of a rosier picture. The enormous benefits of flexitime and working from home have still to hit our shores though it is heartening to hear about its increasing popularity in countries with more vision and gumption.

Besides, before schooling became mandatory, children grew up toiling with their parents, unless they were the lucky few to be born in wealthy families who left their children's "education" in the hands of governesses and tutors. Girls of course had no hope of going to university and were primed for the marriage market. Even when village schools began to sprout, not all provided the best place to learn the three Rs.

Fast forward to 2006. Despite several shortcomings and a growing list of social and political ills, most schools still strive towards an ethos of character-formation, though mayhem is the reality of several others.

So when you span a historical overview, most parents and children would not have it made. Middle class morality, however, clung fervently to the ideal of children growing up with mum and dad. What is definitely undergoing radical change today is the very concept of the family nucleus. More and more children are today growing up in divorced/separated families or bred by single mothers. Now even by same sex parents.

It is far too early to asses the impact of this latest, still limited development. By contrast, children who live through the turmoil of a divorce or separation are well into the second, sometimes third generation. No doubt they feel the pain. They feel cheated. And yet you would not find a child who would prefer the living hell of a soured relationship, to the relative peace of parents living serenely under different roofs. Unfortunately, this is a rare reality of marriages that have hit the rocks. But it is even sadder to see "sticking together for the children's sake" used as sticky tape to thousands of dead or violent marriages.

Are not children growing up in such dread scarred for life? Children are not stupid. They shrink from endless bickering or mutinous silence. They intuit the cynicism of being used as pawns in an acrimonious break-up where money matters are likely to become the bone of contention propped by a binge on adult self-pity. Since they loathe hissing or muted tension, children come to accept separation or divorce more readily than the adults who surround them; probably because their instinct for self-preservation is thankfully so strong.

"If you sit down and watch a movie which is really emotional and moving it is like turning a key in a lock, all your bottled-up feelings will be released and you will feel much better." This is a snippet of advice in Help, Hope and Happiness written by nine-year-old Libby Rees under a year ago and published last January in England. This self-help book written by a child for children says much about Libby's remarkable fluency and precocious business savvy. It says much more about today's families. Have we reached the stage where children look to one another to boost their coping mechanisms?

There is no easy fix to dysfunctional families. What is a gross mistake is to justify children's unacceptable behaviour because they are going through the trauma or are in the wake of their parents' broken marriage; for this axes personal responsibility for their actions. Are we as grown-ups acknowledging the fact that we too are responsible for what we say and do... and by extension the happiness of others?