At the Committee of Supply (COS) debate for PMO yesterday, Josephine Teo spoke about the importance of valuing and celebrating parenthood as a society. One point she made struck me: quite apart from financial incentives and practical considerations, a country’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) depends also on historical and social factors, which are often not well understood.
She gave the example of France, which has a TFR of 2.0 — one of the highest among developed countries. France has good social policies to support and encourage parenthood. But when Josephine visited France to study their experience, all the people she met gave one more explanation: "1945". France lost so many of its citizens in the Second World War (600,000 dead) that after the War ended in 1945, there was a strong desire - a national psyche - to repopulate the nation.
The TFR is a statistic, but it is made up of countless individual stories. I was reminded of the late Congressman Tom Lantos whom I met years ago. He was a Hungarian Jew and Holocaust survivor. He lost most of his family in the concentration camps. After the War, he emigrated to the US and became a Congressman. He had two daughters and 18 grandchildren. His daughters decided to give him as many grandchildren as they could, to make up for the family members killed.
Singapore is fortunate not to have experienced such calamities. Our TFR was 1.25 last year. We should do all we can to encourage couples to have more kids. Hence the enhancements to paternity leave, shared parental leave, and adoption leave that Josephine announced. They come into effect next year, so if you are thinking of having a baby (or another baby), now is the time to start trying! :) - LHL
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(Families enjoying a day out at Marina Barrage / Photo by me)
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Budget 2016: How Can We Build A Better Singapore Together? ... SGBudget2016 will be presented in Parliament on Thu, 24 Mar 2016 by Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat ... ... <看更多>