STI: Bringing up baby: Men in the spotlight

Mar 13, 2004

Bringing up baby: Men in the spotlight
by Tan Tarn How

SINGAPORE men - it's time to buck up.

You'd better start pulling your weight at home or women will continue voting with their wombs and choose career over children. Don't even think that the pro-baby goodies you throw at them are enough.

This was the reality check issued to the Singapore male yesterday by four MPs, one of whom was a man.

The first in the House in the two days of debate to blame his own gender, Dr Mohamad Maliki Osman's message echoed that of his female counterparts: Dad has to share equally in bringing up baby or there won't be any baby to take care of.

Why, he lamented, were questions about the baby shortage always directed at women as if it were solely their issue.

Said the Sembawang GRC MP: 'Perhaps that is why we have not been able to reverse the trend.

'Men's minds have not been sufficiently 'liberated'.'

The solution was for men to be comfortable with their masculinity and thus treat their partners as equal, said the father of two young children.

The Government too must have family policies that are equal for both sexes, he said.

'Only then will we send the strong message to our womenfolk that they should and will be supported when they bear our children.'

The mixed signals sent to women - that they should pursue a career and yet be left holding the baby, as it were, was also the grouse of Dr Amy Khor (Hong Kah GRC) and Miss Irene Ng (Tampines GRC).

A mother of three, Dr Khor blamed it on a conservative society, a government which supported a 'patriarchal and male-dominated society' and women's own wish to fulfil themselves as individuals.

Forced to choose, women increasingly opt for career over children.

Like Dr Maliki, she wanted more shared responsibility between husband and wife.

Also on her wishlist: longer paternity leave, equal medical benefits for women in the civil service, citizenship rights for children of a Singaporean woman and her foreign husband, and the right of women to claim child relief and maid levy tax breaks.

'Please listen to women', was her closing plea.

Amending that to 'Please listen to women as equals', Miss Ng said measures such as maternity leave and baby bonuses might not be enough to stop the slide in the birth rate here.

What was needed was to 'move from our patriarchal system to a more gender-equal one'.

She asked for the Government to get out of the family affairs of Singaporeans by not telling them who should be head of the household, and to set an example of giving up to two weeks' paternity leave to civil servants.

Miss Indranee Thurai Rajah (Tanjong Pagar GRC), one of 21 MPs who spoke yesterday, also doubted that money talked loud enough.

If she were married, and considering having children, 'the single most important thing to me would be that I had the husband's support because I would have to know that he would be there if I needed for him to take on part of the role', said the 40-year-old lawyer.

What was needed was nothing less than a social and mindset change, she said.

Otherwise, the policies that result are 'only addressing symptoms and not necessarily the cause'.