AWARE Board Member Teo You Yenn discusses why we need bolder moves for a more inclusive society.

Read Part 1 of this interview here.

PART 2: THE STATE, FAMILY AND FERTILITY

The announcement of the enhanced Marriage & Parenthood Package in January this year has stirred a lot of discussion and debate around the direction of Singapore’s pronatalist policies, the intrusion of the state into fertility decisions and the unequal right to support for parenthood that current policies reflect.

Is one week of paternity leave enough? Should support for parenthood be extended to some parents, but not others? Do short-term financial incentives like the Baby Bonus work? Who gains, and who loses out from these benefits?

We ask AWARE Board Member and Assistant Professor of Sociology at NTU, Dr Teo You Yenn, where we might be going wrong, and what it takes to really be “pro-family”.

The government has introduced a slew of measures under the new Marriage and Parenthood Package in an attempt to boost Singapore’s declining birth rate. This includes the introduction of paternity leave. What is your take on this step?

One week of paternity leave is certainly a big improvement from nothing. But people who have been around babies will know that there is a lot of learning involved in taking care of them. Also, there is a lot of labour involved for the first years of a child’s life. You cannot become competent within a week.

I think we now have a situation where many men want to be more involved in their children’s lives, want to be there for everyday care, but their circumstances do not allow it.

The lopsided leave structures solidify the sense that women should be the ones to make the decisions about how to balance work and family. It may also lead to women of childbearing age being less attractive as employees.

The Parenthood Priority Scheme has been introduced to guarantee a flat for young families – do you think this is incentive enough for couples to want to have children / have children earlier?

While the Parenthood Priority Scheme might enable those who are already oriented toward marrying and having children to do so, we should hope it will not incentivise them to do so!

We want people to be making decisions responsibly. Given its gravity, I don’t think it’s responsible to make a big decision like having a kid based on a few material incentives. I think in general, Singaporeans are in fact quite responsible about their fertility decisions.

The government’s aim through the new parenthood measures is to increase the total fertility rate from the current 1.28-1.3 to 1.4-1.5. From a Sociologist’s perspective, do you think this is achievable? 

We know that fertility rates have been decreasing for more than two decades, coinciding almost perfectly with our pro-natalist policies. That is quite strong evidence that the pro-natalist policies have had very little effect. If they are to achieve the ostensible aims of earlier marriage and higher fertility, the measures must move towards creating a set of social conditions where people can envision themselves and their loved ones leading secure and fulfilling lives.

Such a shift in societal conditions would have to go beyond changing the immediate financial circumstances of young couples thinking of marriage and children. Cash handouts like the Baby Bonus, for example, may temporarily alleviate the financial burdens of couples who are already considering having children, but have not been effective in shifting fertility trends, or persuading those who aren’t considering starting a family to do so.

So the answer to that question depends on some radical rethinking about social conditions, including costs of living, but also aspirations, opportunities, inequalities and feelings of community.

Thus far, I have not seen radical solutions. In fact, the measures continue to emphasize very narrow criteria and very individualized solutions that encourage people to think in terms of “what’s in it for me” and to experience their decisions as very lonely ones that they have to make and bear in isolation.

The new measures are aimed at young, heterosexual couples who are married and employed. Doesn’t this leave out a huge segment of the population who could be parents or are considering parenthood?

How about older couples who are still looking to have children, single parents, stay-at-home parents or same-sex couples?

Social policy should enable a range of arrangements and practices to be truly inclusive. Families come in all shapes and sizes, and if we want to build a society where people care for each other, then policies have to be based on similarities between citizens, rather than differences and a sense of ‘differentiated deservedness’. Policies that single out certain groups of people and their choices as “desirable”, while marginalising others, should go.

If we protect only a single group’s rights to access support for caregiving, we create in our society divisions and conflicts of interest, as well as the sense that there are more and less valuable citizens, who accordingly deserve more and less support.

Some people see women’s career focus as a hindrance to fertility. What are your thoughts?

Human beings are complex and capable–we don’t have to limit ourselves to being one thing, and certainly do not need to be just one thing throughout our life course. What we need is to enable people to be caregivers and wage-earners, to be nurturers and professionals, in ways that match with their training, talents and sensibilities rather than with their sex categories. And they don’t necessarily have to be everything at a given stage in life.

Our current conditions are unforgiving towards people who try to do multiple things at the same time andalso unforgiving toward people who choose to focus on one thing (in that they find it hard to switch later on in life and are deprived of benefits pegged to certain roles).

If you look at education, we have made many gains as a nation. One of the significant gains is to ensure that we do not only tap on the talents and potentials of half the population. It is very positive and valuable, not just for individual women, but for society as a whole, that women can now excel in the formal economic realm.

On the other hand, we have stalled in terms of shifts in the workplace and the roles of men as fathers. That is where change needs to happen so that the gains we have made in women’s education can be fully realized.

The PAP’s women’s wing has made some suggestions to promote a pro-family work culture in Singapore in a bid to get more mothers to rejoin the workforce. Is this the right direction?

The focus cannot be on mothers alone. A culture that focuses on women’s roles as mothers is not the same thing as a pro-family culture. A culture that recognizes and supports people when they have to take care of various members of their families – spouses, children, siblings, aunts, parents, nephews and nieces – that is a pro-family culture.

At the end of the day, having children is a personal choice. Do you think state should intervene so much in fertility decisions?

The “choices” we make are made within specific social contexts, not in social vacuums. The kind of children we raise, like it or not, will shape our society of the future. So having children, is not, in fact just a personal choice.

The state – as a representation of society – has the responsibility of creating enabling conditions so that people can lead the lives they want. That should be at the core of its interventions–providing conditions that enable, and that enable across the board – regardless of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, marital status, and so on.

If it approaches with these principles in mind – principles of enabling all members of society to live good lives, then it will need to rethink the constraining effects of current measures. Importantly, precisely because having children is not just a personal matter, there is a major responsibility for civil society to continually insert ourselves into the conversation, to stake our claim on matters that so profoundly affect all of us.

On You Yenn:

Why did you decide to join AWARE? 

I volunteer my time because I think at AWARE is a great organization, where passionate and principled people come together, and where we become more than the sum of our parts. I believe that to make a difference, collective action is necessary.

Everyone in any society has a responsibility to think about what could make their world a better place. The reality of life, however, is that not everyone has the luxury of free time, stable income, supportive family members, and access to groups of likeminded people. I have these privileges; it is my responsibility to try to make a difference in what limited ways I can.

What do you find rewarding about being at AWARE?

One of the important things I have learnt at AWARE is that diversity is something that must be actively embraced. We do not treat diversity like you would lights from oncoming traffic – by looking away. Instead, we have numerous and robust, sometimes combative, debates.

We bring to the table diverse experiences, training, outlook–and we use our differences to produce new ideas, to generate ideals and practices that far transcend what we can achieve as individuals. In other words, we treat diversity not as something to be tolerated, but something to be embraced, worked through, and ultimately utilized.