Young couples encouraged to take first steps towards
parenthood
SINGAPORE : Voluntary welfare organisation "I Love
Children" wants to encourage young couples to take their first
steps towards parenthood.
Its "Maybe Baby" campaign follows Prime Minister Lee Hsien
Loong's recent call to couples to have more babies.
Singing out the joys of parenthood is one way "I Love Children"
hopes it can strike a chord with couples.
The four-year-old organisation wants couples aged 21 to 39 to talk
about having kids.
Its survey of 50 people showed that most wanted to focus on careers
and being together. Some wanted more family support, while others
said it is too costly to have babies.
The findings were from focus group discussions commissioned last
year.
Joni Ong, president, "I Love Children" said: "The results show
that, as expected, establishing their career, waiting for their
finances to be built up, even trying to find more time for
couplehood...those were some of the reasons that came up."
Commenting on the rationale for the survey, Ms Ong said: "The whole
idea is it is going to serve as an impetus for us to have a
quantitative study, some time towards the end of this year, where
we are going to survey 1,000 young people on how we can help
them...basically find out about their perceptions about parenthood,
what are the barriers, what are their needs, so that it would
better help us organise the necessary information, seminars...to
help them to overcome these barriers."
Singapore's resident total fertility rate (TFR) slid to 1.23 last
year - the lowest level ever.
This means the country was short of at least 10,000 babies.
To help couples get over teething fears, "I Love Children" has
lined up several activities.
Ms Ong said: "We have a 'Maybe Baby' campaign coming up in April,
May and we want people to start talking about parenthood. We want
to talk about issues. We want them to come forth and share with us
their issues, whether it be work-life balance, whether it be career
establishing, and things like that.
"We want to have a forum to discuss such things so there will be
seminars, there will be talk shows, there will be expert advice
panellists."
The "I Love Children" bus was launched three years ago and while it
used to be bright orange, it has been given a new lease of life
with a recent revamp. From next month onwards, it will be making
its way round Singapore to the heartland shopping malls as well as
the community centres. And the public will be able to hop onto the
bus to find out more about the joys of parenthood.
Meanwhile, a one-stop web portal will be launched in May to share
parenting tips and the kinds of financial assistance
available.
- CNA/ms
