The hard truth about raising a family in SG...

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YES, WE WANT KIDS, BUT ...
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SINGAPORE - Young Singaporean couples want to have children - but they are apprehensive about taking the first step towards parenthood or delaying it for practical reasons.

Most want to focus on careers and being together, while some want more family support. The cost of having babies is also an issue.

These were the key findings of a survey of 50 young Singaporeans at focus group discussions conducted by voluntary welfare organisation, I Love Children (ILC) last year.

ILC president Joni Ong was not surprised.

"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."

So, why have the survey? "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're going to survey 1,000 young people on how we can help them," Mrs Ong explained.

Even before that, the VWO is coming up with its Maybe Baby campaign in April, where it wants those between 21 and 39 to start talking about parenthood.

"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'll be seminars, there'll be life talk shows, there'll be expert advice panelists," said Mrs Ong.

The campaign follows the Prime Minister's recent call to couples to have more babies.

Singapore's resident total fertility rate 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 their parenting fears, an ILC bus highlighting the joys of parenthood will make its way around Singapore to the heartland shopping malls as well as the community centres from next month onwards.

The revamped three-year-old ILC bus made its debut with 70 young couples and Minister of State for Community Development, Youth and Sports over at the Chingay Parade on Saturday.

A one-stop Web portal will also be launched in May to share parenting tips and the kinds of financial assistance available.

From TODAY, Monday, 22-Feb-2010
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