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Boosting birth rate, but at what cost?
EVEN before the suggestion left her lips, Non-Constituency MP Lina Chiam knew that it was a radical one.
'I'd like to ask a very controversial question,' she said when Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean was fielding questions on how Singapore was planning to deal with its flagging birth rate.
'Will he (DPM Teo) consider baby drop, since Malaysia is doing that and we are having this population problem of not having enough babies?' she asked, referring to the baby hatches that have been deployed in Malaysia to rein in baby dumping.
Young mothers can leave their babies anonymously in the hatch, which is about the size of a regular crib. The reasoning here is that by having such a hatch, unwed mothers would have their babies rather than abort them, and they have a better chance of survival.
Thus in theory, at least, having a baby hatch would increase the actual number of babies born to Singaporean mothers and raise the birth rate. Of course, Singapore has a very low rate of abortions and baby-dumping cases, so this would not prop up the numbers by that much.
Still, every little bit helps, right?
DPM Teo did not reject the idea outright, but stressed the need to be cautious about the kinds of measures Singapore takes to increase the birth rate.
'I think we must be very careful when we implement such measures, whether or not we end up inadvertently encouraging sort of unwanted pregnancies and births, causing greater problems as a result of that,' he said.
The reminder was a timely one, given that the quest to boost the sluggish birth rate appears to be growing increasingly urgent.
Singapore's birth rate last year was 1.2 children for each woman of child-bearing age, well below the required replacement rate of 2.1.
This was the result of an across-the-board decrease in birth rates for all ethnic groups in the past decade. All this despite the Government pumping increasing amounts of money to try and prop up the birth rate.
The budget for marriage and parenthood measures is now $1.6 billion, more than three times the $500 million it set aside in the year 2000.
Last month, the Government appeared to go back to the drawing board. DPM Teo said it would review its policies again, and urged members of the public to contribute suggestions.
If yesterday's parliamentary sitting was anything to go by, baby hatches aside, the review might end up going over a lot of new ground.
Many of the MPs who spoke up talked about ideas like making childcare more accessible and legislating for paternity leave. These are well-worn ideas that have been discussed numerous times before.
The concern here - borne out by the willingness of Mrs Chiam yesterday to contemplate a baby drop - is that we have tried so many things without success that we may now have to resort to unthinkable ideas. There is a sense that we cannot be choosy about how we get our babies.
Nominated MP Janice Koh expressed a similar, if more restrained, version of that sentiment during the same debate yesterday.
Like Mrs Chiam, she too seemed acutely aware of the precarious turf she was venturing into.
She was so cautious in the way she phrased her question that some members had trouble understanding what she was really getting at.
'Irrespective of marital status, just looking at whole-country statistics, can't Singapore continue to model after the Nordic countries in terms of employing strategies that could also work in Singapore, irrespective of how we calculate the stats, whether it's out of wedlock or within the family context?' she asked, to some puzzled looks.
The crux of her comments was that Singapore should not rule out strategies that worked in the Nordic countries just because a large number of babies there are born to unwed mothers. DPM Teo reiterated his point about side effects in his reply.
The exchanges between DPM Teo and the two MPs hold important questions over the next phase of our pro-family efforts.
To what extent should we compromise on our values in our pursuit of babies? Should we pursue more births as an end in itself, or do we also need to care about what kind of society we end up with?
Singapore appears to have come to a difficult place in its efforts to boost the birth rate. We seem to have now exhausted all the obvious means, plucked all the low-hanging fruit.
The next step forward would logically need to be different, bolder.
But it also needs to be anchored in the knowledge that a healthy birth rate is not the only thing that matters.
[email protected]
EVEN before the suggestion left her lips, Non-Constituency MP Lina Chiam knew that it was a radical one.
'I'd like to ask a very controversial question,' she said when Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean was fielding questions on how Singapore was planning to deal with its flagging birth rate.
'Will he (DPM Teo) consider baby drop, since Malaysia is doing that and we are having this population problem of not having enough babies?' she asked, referring to the baby hatches that have been deployed in Malaysia to rein in baby dumping.
Young mothers can leave their babies anonymously in the hatch, which is about the size of a regular crib. The reasoning here is that by having such a hatch, unwed mothers would have their babies rather than abort them, and they have a better chance of survival.
Thus in theory, at least, having a baby hatch would increase the actual number of babies born to Singaporean mothers and raise the birth rate. Of course, Singapore has a very low rate of abortions and baby-dumping cases, so this would not prop up the numbers by that much.
Still, every little bit helps, right?
DPM Teo did not reject the idea outright, but stressed the need to be cautious about the kinds of measures Singapore takes to increase the birth rate.
'I think we must be very careful when we implement such measures, whether or not we end up inadvertently encouraging sort of unwanted pregnancies and births, causing greater problems as a result of that,' he said.
The reminder was a timely one, given that the quest to boost the sluggish birth rate appears to be growing increasingly urgent.
Singapore's birth rate last year was 1.2 children for each woman of child-bearing age, well below the required replacement rate of 2.1.
This was the result of an across-the-board decrease in birth rates for all ethnic groups in the past decade. All this despite the Government pumping increasing amounts of money to try and prop up the birth rate.
The budget for marriage and parenthood measures is now $1.6 billion, more than three times the $500 million it set aside in the year 2000.
Last month, the Government appeared to go back to the drawing board. DPM Teo said it would review its policies again, and urged members of the public to contribute suggestions.
If yesterday's parliamentary sitting was anything to go by, baby hatches aside, the review might end up going over a lot of new ground.
Many of the MPs who spoke up talked about ideas like making childcare more accessible and legislating for paternity leave. These are well-worn ideas that have been discussed numerous times before.
The concern here - borne out by the willingness of Mrs Chiam yesterday to contemplate a baby drop - is that we have tried so many things without success that we may now have to resort to unthinkable ideas. There is a sense that we cannot be choosy about how we get our babies.
Nominated MP Janice Koh expressed a similar, if more restrained, version of that sentiment during the same debate yesterday.
Like Mrs Chiam, she too seemed acutely aware of the precarious turf she was venturing into.
She was so cautious in the way she phrased her question that some members had trouble understanding what she was really getting at.
'Irrespective of marital status, just looking at whole-country statistics, can't Singapore continue to model after the Nordic countries in terms of employing strategies that could also work in Singapore, irrespective of how we calculate the stats, whether it's out of wedlock or within the family context?' she asked, to some puzzled looks.
The crux of her comments was that Singapore should not rule out strategies that worked in the Nordic countries just because a large number of babies there are born to unwed mothers. DPM Teo reiterated his point about side effects in his reply.
The exchanges between DPM Teo and the two MPs hold important questions over the next phase of our pro-family efforts.
To what extent should we compromise on our values in our pursuit of babies? Should we pursue more births as an end in itself, or do we also need to care about what kind of society we end up with?
Singapore appears to have come to a difficult place in its efforts to boost the birth rate. We seem to have now exhausted all the obvious means, plucked all the low-hanging fruit.
The next step forward would logically need to be different, bolder.
But it also needs to be anchored in the knowledge that a healthy birth rate is not the only thing that matters.
[email protected]
Her suggestion might not be a solution but she's trying. Compare that to what the PAP has done. The power to make a real change is in the hands of the gov't, the PAP. The gov't has access to all the think tanks, sociologists, academics,.... but the only solutions they can come up is to import millions of foreigner
