The falling number of mothers under 16 has made headlines in recent years, but beyond the data on teen mums, Andreana Dibben raises questions about the fathers – who are either legally invisible or committing statutory rape.

Underage boys are not legally acknowledged as fathers in Malta, in what a University lecturer has called "complete gender discrimination". 

This is contrary to the situation that prevails everywhere else in the world, Andreana Dibben, who did her doctorate on teenage pregnancy and motherhood, has said. 

“In Malta, while a teenage girl is always acknowledged as the mother, a teenage boy cannot put his name down on the birth certificate unless he is 18. Once he comes of age, the father has to get permission from the mother, file a court application and carry out a DNA test.

“The whole procedure costs around €1,000 and this is quite unaffordable for 18-year-olds,” said Dr Dibben, who became a mother at age 17 and went on to marry her then-boyfriend.

And there is no data on how many such fathers there are in Malta, since underage fathers are registered as ‘unknown’, a category which also includes those who are not underage but do not want their paternity recognised. 

A worrying trend that featured in Dr Dibben’s doctoral research is the age gap between fathers and mothers. Of the 15 mothers she spoke to for her study, 10 girls were aged under 18 but only one father was underage.

“We frame the issue of teenage pregnancies as a girls’ problem, but the problem is that men are having sex with underage girls. This is statutory rape. We frown upon child marriage but not upon underage conjugal relationships.

“We might not have child marriages in Malta, but we have conjugal relationships of children with adults.”

Dr Dibben said that her discussions with teenage mothers suggested that there were situations where contraception was part of a power game.

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Sometimes, the male partner – usually an adult – does not allow his girlfriend to use contraceptives to ensure she does not cheat. Elsewhere in the West, it is more culturally ingrained in men that having sex with underage girls will get them in trouble, Dr Dibben notes. In Malta, men need to start being educated that sex with minors is not on. The law needs to be enforced and girls empowered.

How does one empower girls who actually want to get pregnant?

We might not have child marriages in Malta, but we have conjugal relationships between children and adults

For the subjects in Dr Dibben’s study, five pregnancies were planned, five un-planned, and five mothers were ambivalent. While she is in favour of preventing unplanned pregnancies, it is useless, she believes, to view sex education as a solution for those to whom motherhood provides a meaningful identity.

“These girls should be empowered by being taught about the various paths – apart from motherhood – that their youth could take,” says Dr Dibben, who chairs the Women’s Rights Foundation. “It is all about ameliorating the opportunities for all girls, especially those from a socially disadvantaged background.

READ: Age of consent to be lowered to 16

“If they can look ahead at a career, studies or travel, fewer girls will want to have a baby while still in their teens, as they realise that they have wider prospects.

“At the same time, we need to acknowledge that motherhood can be a positive and developmental experience for some teenagers, and that all mothers deserve respect, irrespective of their age or social circumstances.”

This, she said, was the main message of her study.

Three of Dr Dibben’s policy recommendations

• All young parents – male and female – could benefit from a space to talk about their troubles in romantic relationships and their new parental responsibilities. While the services provided by Għożża cover some of this ground with young mothers, the exclusion of young men from regular services is a limitation.

• Support needs to be provided to young parents who are no longer romantically involved, to increase the chances that the relationships remain amicable and to facilitate the fathers’ involvement.

• Some young mothers need time off education and training to care exclusively for their children, especially during the foundation years. Consequently, they need to be supported in accordance with their preferred timing and not forced to return to school.

Fewer teen pregnancies

According to national data, the number of resident births to mothers aged under 16 dropped from 54 in 2006 to 14 last year. In 2009 it peaked at 62.

Data for the first 11 months of this year, provided by Identity Malta, shows the trend carrying on, with the number of mothers aged 16 and under at 14.

Teenage pregnancies are in decline despite what seems to be increased sexual activity and low contraception use.

Nearly eight in 10 persons aged 16 to 40 reported they were sexually active, according to a national survey published in 2012 by the Directorate for Health Information and Research. Among those aged 16 to 18, 41 per cent reported having had sexual intercourse. But as many as 30 per cent of respondents used no contraception for their first sexual intercourse. Failure to use contraception was highest amongst those aged 16 to 18.

It was recently reported that STIs are on the increase in Malta, but Dr Valeska Padovese from the Genito-Urinary Clinic of Mater Dei Hospital believes they are not the cause of the drop in teenage pregnancies – since if a teen girl has an STI, she has been sexually active too briefly for it to make her infertile.

Instead, the decline may be related to the increased use of emergency contraception over the last few years, or abortion, whether done abroad or illegally.

From the mouths of young mums

“It’s not because he doesn’t let me work. He just doesn’t want to see me struggle with a job and the kid… He said he wants to treat me like a queen. That’s the way he thinks. That it’s not the woman’s place to work.”

“It wasn’t an accident. Because then, after I got pregnant, he started going on about me leaving college. That was his plan all along. First to keep me tied to him through getting me pregnant, and second to make me leave school.”

“I wanted to do the coil. You know what he said? He said, ‘Why do you want to do it? You’re cheating on me? So you want to have a free pass to go and screw around?’ ”

“That’s when a man is happy. When he’s got a pregnant woman at home. So he can go out and have fun and have his mind at rest that his woman is stuck at home.”