I don't think anyone can deny that Catherine Gonzi is a person of excellent qualities. She is humble, soft-spoken, natural, persuasive in a gentle manner, the mother of understated elegance as she unassumingly glides through public life, and photogenic to boot. Most of all, she comes across, to me at least, as an understanding person. Maybe that is why I was taken aback by the content of her piece in The Times last Wednesday, obviously written for the occasion of Cherie Blair's presence in Malta to address a business breakfast and to promote her book Speaking For Myself.

What Mrs Gonzi wrote in The Times gave the impression that she is not fully aware of what young parents who have to balance paid work with bringing up children are going through. When she tackles this point in her article, Mrs Gonzi says that "Notwithstanding the fact that this appears to be a daunting task, I personally believe that today's modern world has given us certain tools to make this equation work". Well, the "equation" is not working. As I pointed out in my last piece here, Malta has one of the lowest birth rates and the lowest number of women in gainful employment in the EU. The worst of both worlds. It was reported that Ms Blair also pointed out this problem during breakfast: "Malta has only 33 per cent (35 per cent actually) female participation in the work-force... which is a far cry from the European average of 55 per cent".

Mrs Gonzi then makes a list of the tools which are supposedly helping young parents strike the much talked-about balance: tele-working, flexitime, job-sharing... We have been hearing all this ad nauseam but when one listens to the plight of young working parents we know that these options are not available to many. And this is proven by the statistics for our birth rate and for women's participation rate in the labour market. I am sure Mrs Gonzi knows better as her husband has been responsible for this area of policy for quite a number of years now: first as minister for social policy and now as Prime Minister and, thus, answerable to this deficit, with all its economic and social implications.

Mrs Gonzi then points out that "... then we must also make full use of the tools that society and the government are making available to us". This gives readers who are not in the know the impression that the government and employers are doing their part and it's up to the parents to make the best of the opportunities on offer. It was unfair of Mrs Gonzi to portray the situation thus, implying that parents are not availing themselves to the full of what is on offer. We know that this is not so, since the "tools society and the government are making available" are a far cry from what is necessary. Thus, the dismal results shown in our statistics.

I wonder what overcame Mrs Gonzi; it is so unlike her to take this approach. Maybe the prospect of hosting a woman who managed to keep on practising her profession as a top-ranking barrister and judge, do her duty as Prime Minister's wife and mother of four children - the last one born while Mr Blair was in Office - made Mrs Gonzi feel uneasy that the government led by her husband has yet a long way to go on the work-life balance issue.

As for the book Mrs Blair came to promote, well, I had found it (Speaking For Myself came out a year ago) quite disturbing and disappointing. As Cherie Booth, she was brought up the hard way by her mother in Liverpool. Nevertheless, she made it and became a success in her professional and family life, so she has much to write about which is of interest. But I found her winceworthy verbal diarrhoea on personal details tedious and off-putting. For instance. she gives a step-by-step account of what led to the conception of her last child; she makes references to her husband's "strong young body", the "smell of his skin" and the way his hair curls down over his collar. True, the concept of privacy is not what it used to be but all these vivid personal descriptions make me cringe nonetheless. You'd think it was Barbara Cartland writing.

I found all this to be quite strange, especially since during her husband's terms in office, Mrs Blair often complained of being in a "gold-fish bowl" and was loathe to the media prying on her private life. Now she blurts it all out herself. In this age of reality television, Mrs Blair seems to have caught the emotional incontinence bug and cast privacy and self-restraint to the wind. Her famous last words to the press, upon leaving 10 Downing Street for the last time were: "I won't miss you lot" to which the exiting Prime Minister is said to have smiled. Poor Tony.

From this aspect, give me Catherine Gonzi any time.

The author is a sociologist and a Labour member of Parliament.