I wish to congratulate Maria Hammett for winning the political marketing strategy ‘Be Prime Minister for a Day’. By simply doing this, she wisely brought to the fore the importance of education for parenthood.

This suggestion went unheeded by all education ministers- Marianne Theuma, Marsascala

Perhaps the idea was too premature then, but for the past 35 years or so, I have been directly meeting authorities to highlight the need for an organised school for parents in Malta. This suggestion went unhee­ded by all ministers of education from both political parties and the people concerned for all these years.

Whether we like it or not, societies depend on family units led by parents. It is useless investing in academic education for careers and discarding preparation for parenthood, when we know that the roots of truly healthy adults lie within the families they were brought up in, especially in the early years of childhood.

A comprehensive programme to empower parents covers personal development, relationship skills, pregnancy-related courses, the birth experience and its psychological outcome on the father/mother/baby unit, the early postnatal period, parenting skills for the primary and the rest of the parenting years, even beyond the ‘empty nest’ syndrome.

A ‘life-long learning’ programme of education must be accompanied by a good service of emotional support. In days gone by this used to be automatically provided by the exten­ded family, but sadly not any more.

Other countries acknowledge the importance of such a service and provide it as a ‘new’ profession – to prevent problems cropping up in healthy families, and taking the op­portunity to create more jobs. All this may be provided in a specialis­ed, well-organised school for parents.

May I suggest to the Prime Minister, present or future, to acknowledge such a wealth of opportunities.

Let the experience of ‘Prime Minister for a day’, not remain just a political marketing strategy which enjoyed a few hours of media coverage only to be forgotten after a while, but let it be the spark needed to start enhancing family living in our country, as soon as possible.