Malta has the highest rate of secondary schoolchildren who live with just one parent, a new study carried out among 41 countries reveals.
Over a third (37.6 per cent) of schoolchildren aged 11, 13 and 15 live with one biological parent; a figure that shatters the perception that Malta has a strong family core.
The figure, which emerges from the latest Health Behaviour of School-Aged Children Study, shows a drastic shift in the traditional family model over a four-year span - in 2002, the majority (92 per cent) of children lived with both natural parents, as opposed to 61.5 per cent in 2006.
"We knew the situation was getting worse but the shift is startling," Marianne Massa, principal investigator of the HBSC survey in Malta, told The Times.
The study, carried out in Europe and North America, delves into children's social background, body image and health behaviours. The questionnaire was distributed to 1,500 students from the three age groups.
The age groups represent the onset of adolescence, the challenge of physical and emotional changes and the middle years when important life and career decisions begin to be made.
The question that led to this shocking statistic says: "All families are different (for example, not everyone lives with both parents, sometimes people live with just one parent, or they have two homes or live with two families) and we would like to know yours".
The students then had to tick the people who lived in their home - mother, father, stepmother, stepfather, grandmother, grandfather, foster or children's home, or other.
Ms Massa explained that Malta's figure was staggeringly high because, apart from single parents, separated couples could not remarry, unless the marriage is annulled, so children were either living with one parent or in a household with the parent's new partner.
In other countries this would constitute a stepfamily, not a common concept in Malta, unless one parent died and the other remarried. In the US, for example, 24.4 per cent live with a single parent, while 14.3 per cent live with a stepfamily.
"This statistic exposes the reality of life in Malta. We have to accept that the family structure is changing and we need to equip the children with personal and social values to minimise the effect this change has on their development," she said.
The disappearance of the traditional family unit - defined by Pope Benedict XVI as "founded on indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman" - will have repercussions on society.
Fr Charles Tabone, a sociologist, said that if the biological parent and their partner raised young children in a traditional family unit, the repercussions will be minimal. However, in the long-run, this situation denoted instability because when they grew up and discovered the situation it would have a negative impact on the child. The child would grow up questioning whether they would have the same fate.
"We do need to accept the new forms of the family and support them but we cannot say what is happening is OK or that this is an option which reaps the same results as the traditional family model," Fr Tabone said.
"There are different forms of families and both can function properly but the chances are it will be stronger when it's based on marriage and provides more stability for the child and society," he added.