Children and childhood featured very strongly in the last electoral campaign. Both major political parties made the unfeigned innocence of minors the focal point of visual and even verbal propaganda in an attempt to associate themselves with what actually epitomises the future. Happy children, happy families, a secure future, was the message our political forces were striving to drive home. The Nationalist Party was more convincing on this particular score, so it won the general election, again.

Seven months on we witness the unfolding of the first budget in this Nationalist Legislature. The new Finance Minister was faced with the mammoth task of finding just the right balance between lifting the populace out of the pits of depression the utility tariff saga had hurled them into and guarding the government's not-too-hefty finances.

It is not easy to convince people that money has to be snatched out of their pockets for their own good, especially when a few months back they had been promised the exact opposite but, dilemma or not, our Finance Minister did what was expected of him and did it with grace. I wonder though if through all this financial maze Minister Tonio Fenech and Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi gave a thought to the children and childhoods so sweetly portrayed on their billboards.

It is sad but true that, whatever we adults decide, be it in politics or otherwise, children bear the brunt of the results of our decisions. If families find themselves in dire straits, if poverty indeed strikes, it is powerless children who suffer most. When mothers are forced to look for work because they can't make ends meet on one meagre salary, it is the children who come back from school to an empty home.

There are very young children who have to stay at home to cook and clean and mind younger siblings while their parents earn a living. Others spend their entire childhood shoved from one grandparent to another, seeing their stressed-out parents only in weekends. Still worse, some children are forced to join their parents in their work or patiently watch their mother or father desperately seek employment to no avail.

In any of these all too common scenarios, stressed, unfulfilled adults struggle to support and raise a family. Needless to say, children of these families sense the feeling of hopelessness and humiliation... hardly conducive to happy childhoods.

More money should have been left in people's pockets. Before this financial year is out, each school in every village should have a fully-equipped centre for the nurturing of children whose parents have to work. These childcare centres must be happy places where children are showered with love and exposed to agreeable education according to their ages. Obviously, if the government really wants to make the centres accessible to mothers, the service has to be free of charge because who can afford to pay given the meagre wages?

Of course, the ideal scenario would be for babies and toddlers, at least, to be raised totally by parents in these delicate first months but in today's world real alternatives must be made to exist and not just on paper.

The same goes for genuine efforts to curb illiteracy. Too much emphasis is put on bricks and mortar to house the educational system while too little is done to actually overhaul the system to have happier, more accomplished children.

Teachers and lecturers are the ones who can tip the balance in favour of our offspring. Let us invest in them.

Not much has been done to uphold children's rights for as long as I can remember. Empowerment of the Commissioner for Children as well as the children's ombudsman has been delayed for far too long. We should be past the time when we do things simply for the sake of doing them. We have to make the difference in children's life now because childhood doesn't last forever. The budget plans and speeches seem to have overlooked their very raison d'etre. No amount of fiddling with figures can guarantee this country a worthwhile future if children are not in the very centre of each equation.

The author is a Labour member of Parliament.