Is it a piece of good news? Or is it a piece of bad news? I am not certain. Perhaps it is both a piece of good news and a piece of bad news.

I refer to a news item I recently heard on the World Service of the BBC. It reported that a Court in China ordered a daughter to visit her mother at least once every two months and at least on two public feasts. If the daughter does not comply she will have to serve a prison sentence. The sentence was the result of new legislation enacted in China aimed at protecting old people.

It is good news for the old lady. But I think that it is bad news as it portrays a society that is so uncaring for its older generations that a daughter has to be ordered by a Court to visit her old mother. This is simply shameful.

Such examples - abandonment of parents not Court sentences - exist also in Malta.

Due to a condition which could not be cared for at home my father passed the last few of his living years at two different homes for old people. I visited him daily spending an average of more than three and half hours every day. As a result, I almost became part of the furniture and could notice at close quarters how old people are treated by their relatives.

Some were really cared for. Their relatives visited them every day. Others were not so lucky as hardly anyone ever came to visit.

There was a particular person who was in a bad physical condition. I never saw anyone ever visiting her. Perhaps relatives came in other times of day, I told myself. I asked around and people confirmed that hardly ever anyone came to visit. When she passed away i was surprised by the newspaper announcement of her death. It was accompanied by a never ending list of mourners. She happened to be a very rich person who was abandoned during her years of need and 'mourned' on her death. The relatives had to go through the motions of public mourning before claiming their share of her will!

I met another example of total abandonment. The relatives just came to visit once a month when the person received his pension cheque! Isn't this shameful and awful?

These are perhaps extreme cases but rest assured there there is more abuse of old people than abuse of children! It is not sexual abuse but serious emotional and sometimes even physical abuse.

Is the Chinese way the correct way that should be adopted to care for old people?

Their intentions are undoubtedly laudable, but I don't think that law is the right way to tackle the problem. The law can - and should - deter people from doing bad things; but is it effective to make them do good things? The Chinese lady can be forced to visit her mother but it cannot force her to care and love her mother.

The truth of the matter is that things are not the way they used to be concerning the relations between the older and younger generations. Radical societal, structural, economic and cultural developments brought with them an enormous change in the role of old people in society. In a slow moving culture, old persons were the data bases of society. In our fast moving societies, knowledge changes so rapidly that being old stopped being equal to being a deposit of knowledge. Old people can though can claim the role of dispensers of experience. This role is not universally recognized.

In Malta our old generation has a new role: child minders of their nieces and nephews. This is also good news and bad news. It is good news as this gives value added to old people. It could also be bad news as it implies that old people are valued for what they can do more than for what they did or for what they are. A utilitarian society looks at people - not just old people - not as an ends in themselves but as a means for something else, e.g producing wealth.

We have to move from this utilitarian concept of society if we really want to treat the old - and not just the old - with the dignity that they deserve. Spending time with one's old parents can be considered to be wasted time from a production point of view. But it is extremely enriching from a human point of view.

Man and women do not live just by producing bread but by giving themselves to others, particularly to those who have given so much to them in years go by.

And if you want to be egoistic about all this remember that besides the poor, even the old, will be always with us. Tomorrow you will be one of them.