All that happens in the family

Many heart-warm­ing thi­ngs have been said ab­out the fa­mily. For one, Colonel Potter in M*A*S*H declared: “I don’t care how poor a man is; if he has family, he’s rich.” Bishop Desmond Tutu described the family as “God’s gift to you, as you are to them”.

Whatever Bishop Grech utters is framed by some in parameters which make it sound as if it were the pits- Fr Joe Borg

Sometimes these gifts become a tad annoying. George Bernard Shaw wisely said that “when our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them”.

Sometimes the family is not the source of just a little bit of annoyance. It could be source of a lot of suffering and frustration. It could be hell on earth. The family can be a thing of beauty that is a joy forever, and most fortunately are. However, the family can also be the beast.

Beast or beauty, whatever happens in the family affects society and whatever happens in society affects the family. Last month’s discussion in the Parliament’s Family Affairs Committee showed some of these family/society interfaces and threw light on the progressively chan­ging snapshot of the Maltese family.

Committee chairman Jean Pierre Farrugia referred to an international study by the Relationship Foundation. This concluded that the most acute family problems in 25 EU states were: striking a work-life balance; maternity/paternity leave; child care costs; fertility rates/births to women between the ages of 15 and 19; making ends meet; care of the elderly and the disabled, and work stress.

Some of these themes were discussed in Gozo Bishop Mario Grech’s pastoral letter where he quite rightly treated the societal dimension of the family while noting both the political as well as the public relevance of the family.

As is usually the case now, whatever Mgr Grech utters is framed by some in parameters which make it sound as if it were the pits.

Many proceed to read these negative comments and form a judgement without even bothering to read what he actually said. Quite naturally his comments and opinion are open to criticism and debate but they definitely deserve reading.

Mgr Grech put the Church’s mo­ney where his mouth is, announcing the setting up of a Consultancy Unit for the Family. This centre will offer families spiritual, psychological, medical, legal and administrative consultancy. This service will complement the long list of services the Church provides to families.

An interesting idea mooted by Mgr Grech, at least for the second time in just over two months, is his proposal for the setting up of a pro-family advocacy association. Such a group would feature as protagonists in the framing of a rightful family policy. He stresses that such a group should not be “confessional, because the family is a natural institution”.

For Mgr Grech, the family is “built on the relationship between a man and a woman, founded on an unbreakable marriage bond for their mutual union and love, and the procreation, upbringing and education of their children”.

I do understand the emphasis on marriage but how can the reference to “unbreakable marriage” be part of the definition which would then form the basis of public policy once Malta’s legislation recognises and regulates the fact that marriage can be dissolved?

Since married relationships are more in the interest of society than simply cohabiting ones, marriage should be preferred over other types of relationships, for example, in social and fiscal policy. This should be done while fully safeguarding the needs of vulnerable persons independently of the type of relationship they are in.

While I am fully in favour of marriage I do feel uncomfortable refusing to describe as a family a single parent unit, as well as people living in stable relationships who cannot marry for one reason or another. I suspect, however, that positive discrimination in favour of the married state would fulfil Mgr Grech’s objectives without raising the opprobrium that would ensue if we refuse to describe such units as families.

• New Zealand university students are not amused. Last week they were out protesting in the streets following a number of measures announced in the country’s Budget, which they describe as a “black budget for universities”.

British medical university students are also angry. Tom Dolphin of the British Medical Association last week told the Junior Doctors Conference that medical students paying the new £9,000 (€11,260) tuition fees, which come into force in September, will have debts of up to £70,000 (€87,580) by the time they graduate. This increase, among other things, is deterring talented students from entering medicine.

If New Zealand’s and British students are just angry, Québécois University students are raging mad.

The province is facing the most sustained student demonstrations ever held in Canada. May 22 marked the 100th day that students have been refusing to go to class, and the biggest ‘manifencours’ (an abbreviation of ‘manifestation en cours’ or demonstration in the street) yet against tuition hikes.

Hundreds have been arrested. The Quebec government last week passed emergency legislation meant to end the demonstrations. Premier Jean Charest plans to raise university tuition from $2,168 (€1,684) to $3,793 (€2,945) between 2012 and 2017. The government is saying that Quebec still has the lowest tuition fees in Canada; students pay on average just one third of what students pay in other provinces.

By contrast, University students in Malta are quietly coming to the end of the academic year. Lectures will be over next week and exams will start the following week. The monthly stipend cheque will reach them sometime in between.

Meanwhile, “a study by Y. Claire Wang, an assistant professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, predicted that a penny tax per ounce on sugar-sweetened beverages in New York State would save $3bn (€2.4bn) in health care costs over a decade, prevent something like 37,000 cases of diabetes and bring in $1bn (€0.8bn) annually.

“Another study shows that a 2c tax per ounce in Illinois would reduce obesity in youth by 18 per cent, save nearly $350m (€280m) and bring in over $800m (€639m) taxes annually.

“Scaled nationally, as it should be, the projected benefits are even more impressive; one study suggests that a national penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages would generate at least $13bn (€10bn) a year in income while cutting consumption by 24 per cent.

“And those numbers would swell dramatically if the tax were extended to more kinds of junk or doubled to 2c an ounce.” Mark Bittman, a New York Times food columnist, proposing taxing obesity.

Will ministers Tonio Fenech and Joe Cassar please take note!

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt