Small children are not accessories like handbags
The Malta Tourism Authority was presented with a raft of problems today when the Prime Minister and Mrs Muscat made it known that their children would be accompanying them to the Isle of MTV concert, where the regulations do not permit them to be.
There is a blanket ban on attendance by young children, which meant allowing the prime ministerial parents to be in breach of the rules, while those rules are applied to everyone else.
That’s one aspect of it. But there’s something else that needs to be looked at. What is this obsession with taking two small children everywhere, even to places where they are not wanted, do not want to be, and where it is not their place to be?
So far the small twins have been photographed accompanying the government delegation to a European Council meeting, where they attended an evening reception at Dar Malta in Brussels, at the ‘fashionable soiree for the high society’ at Girgenti Palace, at the night-time fashion show at the Office of the Prime Minister, and much more than that.
In one of her interviews during the election campaign, Mrs Muscat said that she and her husband decided to speak to their children in English, not Maltese, because they take their children to embassy receptions and similar events, where they meet lots of people they have to speak to in English. This left me gobsmacked, because taking children to any such thing, as though it is a working-class wedding (at any other wedding, children are strictly uninvited and unwelcome, unless they belong to the immediate family and have a very specific role to play) is completely unheard of.
The Prime Minister and Mrs Muscat must know it’s unheard of, because theirs are always the only two children there. So that means they must think they are special and that an exception must be made for them. But that, of course, also means they have terrible manners. Children should not be imposed on hosts and other guests in contexts where they do not belong, however charming they are.
The Prime Minister and Mrs Muscat have no shortage of babysitters. But even if they did when they started out, they should have organised that side of things by now, and they almost certainly have done.
It’s certainly not a babysitting problem, so what is it? In the run-up to the election campaign, and in the campaign itself, they took the children everywhere to generate positive feelings and round up votes. I could see the sense in that. But now all that is behind us, it is beginning to verge on neurosis. Why drag them around everywhere like handbags? The children’s purpose as a marketing tool has dissipated.
When they should be at home in bed after 7pm, those girls are being hauled around their parents’ social diary. And when they should be in school, they are on government trips out of the country. It’s not just a bad example; it’s bad for them.
When Mrs Muscat told her most recent interviewer that they feel very fortunate and don’t want to waste a minute of the next five years, she must have included her children in that, though their idea of being lucky can’t possibly be hers. I never knew any six-year-olds whose idea of fun was a reception after 8pm, full of boring grown-ups.
But the real risk Mrs Muscat runs here is having the public lose all sense of her and her husband as a couple. Before the campaigning got into full swing, the two of them were always photographed together. Now, Mrs Muscat is always photographed with her children, except for when they are at school, and her husband is always photographed either without them or with all three at once. Mrs Muscat is no longer cast in the role of wife, but in the role of mother.
When this happens, a woman should watch out. For a woman to do it to herself is just asking for trouble. This is a Mediterranean society, where ‘mother’ in image terms means ‘sexless object’ and ‘not a real person but a symbol’. When a woman is never seen or pictured without her children, she loses her identity completely. And they lose their sense of self.
31 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
The organisers of Joseph Calleja’s concert had better be prepared. The kids were there last year jumping all over the place.
Joey Waiver can do what the fosh he likes.
The Muscats’ logic is, “Love me love my dog”: if everyone likes the cute twins then it goes without saying that everyone likes Muscat.
When the Muscats take their ‘pupi’ with them the attention goes on the children and no fruitful political discussions ensue.
Sorry for being crude but if they tow along with them a pair of cute toy poodles the attention will shift automatically on the Prime Minister’s poodles.
‘Hobbuha lil Michelle ghax hi thobbkom’ – li qed jaghmlu Joey u Michelle hu li jzeffnu lill-uliedhom biex in-nies issir thobbhom ukoll
As from next year I bet most children – not as young as the twins – will be wanting to attend. What will be done then?
Guess he issued a waiver.
Are the Muscat twins not monitored by the Social Services for their absence from school?
A friend of mine last week was informed by the personnel of the Social Services to go and justify her daughter’s absence from school, even though she had already presented the doctor’s certificates.
Her daughter is subject to attend frequently at hospital for checkups (and the school headteacher where she attends knows about her condition). Besides the hassle, this poor woman had also to book a day’s leave to attend her appointment.
Did the Malta Tourism Authority give Franco Debono free tickets to the VIP area this year?
In the UK you don’t see children except in schools and where children normally go, you rarely – or never – see them in social functions after 7pm.
Where are the social services? isn’t this a form of child abuse?
And where is the Commissioner for Children?
I was thinking on the same lines.
I told you once and I shall tell you once again “Hey Daphne, leave those kids alone. All along you’re just another brick in the wall”.
[Daphne – Not only unpleasant, I see, but also incredibly infantile. One of the reasons European politicians always keep their children out of the limelight is to protect their privacy and allow them to have as normal a life as possible. Clearly, you come from a strange school of thought which has it that the prime minister and his wife should be permitted to flaunt their children repeatedly before the cameras, in places where they shouldn’t be, while nobody is permitted to say anything, just like in China. That song was released when I was in the fourth form, circa 1979. It’s so very old that I owned the original release album, aged 14. Very, very dated.]
Don’t waste time stating the obvious, Daphne.
Stingray: there’s also a line that says “we don’t need no education”. Note the double-negative and follow the advice!
This Stingray guy should change his moniker to Ringworm.
It’s, ‘All in all…’ you moron.
Unfortunately, it seems the PM and his lady know no better.
They should get real – for their own good, their children’s good and the good of the nation he, not she and certainly not the children, represents.
You can take the peasant out of the village but you can never take the village (mentality) out of the peasant.
I thought it was obvious why they are always around in official functions. It’s the first time a Labour leader has a proper family with a wife who lives with him and children, so let’s show them all to everyone lest they forget.
Those poor twins must get really fed up of being dragged by their pushy parents to all sorts of activities where they are invariably the only two children invited.
Is this where they wanted their children to be? In the middle of a brawl?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130626/local/isle-of-mtv-attracts-huge-crowd.475522
They do have a woman to clean the house, cook and look after the children. Someone from Rabat – Tanti – and she is paid fifty euro a day, I don’t know if she is working with them (bil-ktieb) but I think the Muscats do everything as it should be.
[Daphne – That’s probably Mrs Muscat’s mother, Mrs Tanti from Rabat, and I doubt that she is paid. I don’t know of any woman who takes payment for helping with her daughter and grandchildren.]
Who knows Daphne? I think whoever is she, for sure she is being paid.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
It is so obvious that they are milking every penny possible. I just would not put it past them that they would put Michelle’s mother on a payroll. After all fifty euro a day is not a miserly pay. Out of the country’s coffers of course.
After all from where these people come from, it wouldn’t matter much if the prime minister’s mother in law would be employed as a housekeeper.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100112/local/lady-gaga-caught-swearing-in-malta-concert.289421
Is this the place to take your children?
In a previous post, I was half-joking about one of the most difficult decisions taken by Muscat being whether to allow his children to go to school at all. It’s really lookng like I will have to take that statement a bit more seriously.
I’m told that Joseph Muscat didn’t go, after all, but hey you should have seen Karmenu Vella taking pictures with fans after the concert like a pop star. I also saw Joseph’s driver in the VIP pit.
The reason for dragging the kids around is because Muscat is in constant marketing mode. It seems that someone has drilled into him the importance of being seen as a family man.
Yes this has been getting on my nerves really. The Muscats have the cheek to USE their children to win sympathy. It`s now reached the verge of backfiring badly.
No it’s not her mother that’s helping her, this women her maiden surname was Tanti, I know that she left her job and she is working with the Muscat family.
“In one of her interviews during the election campaign, Mrs Muscat said that she and her husband decided to speak to their children in English, not Maltese, because they take their children to embassy receptions and similar events, where they meet lots of people they have to speak to in English.”
——–
My parents always spoke to me in Maltese and so did my teachers.
[Daphne – Mine spoke to us in both, safe in the assumption that their children were capable of learning two languages.]