Remember David Cameron’s call to hug a hoodie and to try to understand the causes of juvenile delinquency? And George Bush’s hopeless abstinence campaign against teenage pregnancy? And Tony Blair agonising over binge drinking – which he termed “the British national disease”?

Perhaps we should discuss the diminishing role of parents as they are pushed into becoming worker drones- Claire Bonello

Well, apparently all three leaders were missing a trick when dealing with teen pregnancies, juvenile delinquencies and binge drinking. The incidence of all three could easily have been reduced dramatically. The solution was staring them in the face, and they never even realised.

The magic solution was that of extending school hours. Or so we were lead to believe by the representative of the Maltese Confederation of Women’s Organisations (MCWO) appearing on this week’s edition of Bondiplus.

The programme was one which lumped the “problem” (as it was constantly referred to) of childcare or placement after school hours, and teachers’ working hours. It turns out that school hours do not coincide with working hours, and that is a matter of inconvenience to many working parents.

The people at the Chamber of Commerce are also very concerned about the issue, with their representative on the programme getting greatly exercised about the way a parent had to down sticks to pick up their children when school was out. This, he said, was affecting the nation’s productivity.

He repeated this so often, he started to come across very much like a supervisor in a Chinese factory during Mao’s Great Leap Forward. He lamented the thousands of man hours lost because parents took the time to be with their children for some minutes beyond the maximum half hour allowed by the Productivity Police.

They had carried out studies, we were told. Productivity could be increased if children’s school hours had to be extended. Children could stay on after school, do their homework, art, craft and sports, and then be picked up by their parents all done and dusted for the day.

The lady from the MCWO was equally enthusiastic about this proposal. Besides increasing the nation’s productivity (that word again), extended school hours would help solve loads of society’s problems. It had been revealed – she told us – that in England there had been a spike in teenage pregnancies, juvenile delinquency and binge drinking – all because students did not attend after-school activities. Maybe I should be in awe of the studies being referred to (all listed in the snappy Powerpoint presentation on the MCWO website), but I just can’t bring myself to believe that any decrease in the number of teenage pregnancies in the UK is due to teenage girls being corralled into an after-school holding pen.

You’d probably have the same effect by making them wear chastity belts. I’m not too sure about the efficacy of after-school programmes in preventing juvenile delinquency and binge drinking either. They may be successful in keeping children off the streets and stopping them from joining feral packs of youths for some hours, but there are hundreds of other reasons why young people resort to anti-social behaviour.

I’m going to refer to some studies myself now. Extensive research shows that a number of factors greatly increase the risk of young people becoming involved in crime. The strongest predictors are a lack of parental involvement in a child’s life, lack of adequate parental supervision, rejection of a child by a parent and a parent’s lack of emotional attachment to a child.

So that would point towards a need for more parental involvement in their children’s lives not less. And that would mean involvement and time spent together even in unstructured activities.

Of course, I’m not saying that having working parents condemns a child to a life of crime. I’m a working parent myself. But I find this constant pressure to outsource every aspect of parenthood by the Productivity Police, to be irritating and short-sighted.

The fanatical feminists and childcare centre owners who hog the airwaves raving about the benefits of dawn-to-dusk childcare seem to dismiss the importance of the relationship between parent and child. They ignore the subtle ways in which a parent can influence and help a child, the way a child can absorb life lessons from his parents and – most importantly – the special bond which can be forged between the two of them, leading to secure and well-adjusted adults.

There is not going to be much chance of this happening if we outsource our parenting roles to people who are not parents – no matter how well qualified they are. Perhaps we should discuss the diminishing role of parents as they are pushed into becoming worker drones, before rushing into the nationwide babysitting trap.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt