Malta’s under-threes have become the centre of a national row after Gozo Bishop Anton Teuma’s comments but the real crisis is quieter: a system that still argues about where babies are cared for instead of who is consistently there for them.
Care and education for young children in our country started off as an economic project in the 1970s. Fifty years later, we are realising that this project was so successful at getting women into the workforce that, now, many feel pressured to outsource care entirely or even end up not having children at all.
However, to move forward, we must realise that this runaway economic success never took account of the human need for child-parent bonding and stable relationships in the early years. The real question is no longer just about female labour participation, nor is it whether childcare is ‘good’ or ‘bad’; it is whether Malta’s system, both at home and in centres, guarantees the stable, responsive relationships that science shows are essential in the early years.
Healthy brain development and emotional security are built through ‘serve and return’ interactions – the back-and-forth exchanges between a child and an adult that literally shape brain architecture, as highlighted by the Harvard Centre on the Developing Child (2025).
As the OECD Policy Brief (2025) explains, process quality – the daily interactions a child has with the adults who look after them every day – is what defines real quality, no matter the setting. Being ‘at home’ does not automatically equate to better outcomes: if parents are unsupported or lack information, the absence of responsive care can be just as damaging. The UNICEF Family-Friendly Policies report (2019) reminds us that the first years of life require “loving environments and stimulating care” that strengthen a baby’s developing brain.
However, in Malta, parents often navigate this critical period in a vacuum, as we currently lack a truly integrated health, education and social services system that supports both the child’s development and the family’s needs. Without a cohesive support structure, families are left to figure out complex developmental needs alone.
Support for parents must therefore go beyond financial measures or available childcare slots. The government should not just throw money at childcare; it needs to ensure the quality element. Picture a young couple in Malta with an 11-month-old: the mother has just gone back to work on reduced hours, the father works shifts and care is ‘patched together’ between grandparents and a childcare centre where rooms – and staff – often change because of high turnover.
Everyone loves the baby and is doing their best, yet, from the child’s perspective, the people, routines and expectations keep changing, with no single adult consistently there as a secure base. This is precisely what the research warns us about.
The state’s responsibility is not only to help parents feel confident but to make it realistically possible for families to offer stable care and to work with providers to guarantee early years services where educators are skilled, respected and stay long enough to build real relationships with children. This requires offering a real choice to parents – in the plural – to be realistically able to spend time with, and bond with, their young child.
Every child, from birth, needs a steady emotional anchor– Charmaine Bonello
As UNICEF’s Innocenti work on childcare warns, instability, whether through rapid staff turnover or inconsistent caregiving, can disrupt attachment, trigger stress and harm development. Every child, from birth, needs a steady emotional anchor: at home, that might be a responsive parent; in childcare, it must be a consistent, trusted ‘key person’, a designated educator who acts as the child’s primary emotional bridge in the centre. This professional must be recognised and supported with the qualifications and ongoing training needed to offer high-quality education and care.
To make this a reality, Malta must shift from a labour-market-first approach to a child-first model of investment that truly gives parents meaningful choice in how and where their under-threes are cared for. A choice is only real when a parent is not forced into the workforce by financial pressure and not forced into low-quality care by a lack of professional standards.
This means, first, a National Integrated Family Strategy that combines health, education and social services from pregnancy throughout the early years of a child’s life: extending paid parental leave so families have a genuine option to remain at home during sensitive attachment stages – noting that Malta currently has one of the poorest parental leave provisions in the EU – and ensuring that all parents receive coordinated guidance to practise responsive care throughout their child’s development.
Second, it means a professionalisation strategy for the workforce, spanning from childcare through to kindergarten. As stressed by the OECD (2025), early years workforce stability is essential. It depends on recognising early years educators as professionals on a par with colleagues at other levels. That recognition must be backed by work-based upskilling, fair pay and better working conditions, so that turnover falls and young children can build strong, lasting relationships with those who care for them.
Of course, we must recognise that a better early years’ system is not a silver bullet on its own. Families in Malta face diverse and complex challenges, from the pressures of the cost of living to the deep-rooted struggles of poverty and social exclusion, which no single policy can solve.
However, ensuring stable, responsive care is a vital first step, a foundational floor that gives every child a better start while we continue the broader work of supporting families in all their needs.
The current debate should not pit parents and providers against the bishop, nor should the government feel it must choose between defending a popular free childcare scheme and admitting it needs improvement. It should unite them in pursuit of true quality, beyond mere regulations.
We must move past the false choice between ‘home good’ and ‘childcare bad’ (or vice versa) and focus instead on the ‘serve and return’ interactions and professional stability that build the human brain.
Families in Malta deserve a system where the best start in life depends not on whether a child is at home or in a centre but on the stability and responsiveness of the adult who cares for them each day.
Charmaine Bonello is a senior lecturer at the Department of Early Childhood and Primary Education, University of Malta.
