Is Our Society Pro-family?

Just yesterday morning, I was pushing Zhi in the stroller and buying groceries at the Marine Parade Central. We were walking along the shops aisle and the stroller accidently hit an old lady's foot. What I didn't expect from this 60 year old auntie is she kicked my stroller back even though I had apologize TWICE! I think this kind of action is something uncalled for. And why kicked the stroller with my son sitting inside?

I can assure you I wasn't cruising the stoller at 10km/hr kind of speed but just a moderate speed because the aisles are crowded with people and the shop's wares. If I had a choice, I wouldn't want to venture to this crowded area. But too bad, I really had to get something from the provision shop. And this is the kind of reaction I get from someone who was probably a mum too!

PM Lee talked about how we need to be more refined and well-mannered as a nation. Does kicking the stroller back defines us as a "refined society"?

Papers and TV news are raging about the new tax incentives, childcare reliefs and other improved maternity benefits for parents dished out by the govt during the PM Lee's national day speech.

Personally, I am quite skeptical on how these benefits is going to boost our national birthrate because in my own opinion, when the couple decided to embark on having children, they don't usually consider these tax reliefs nor childcare reliefs as one of their top decision factors.

I feel Singapore is not ready to embrace a pro-family society. A lot of people have negative mentality of kids and/or having kids. And that is one of the reasons why people are marrying but delaying having children. It has become a culture issue.

1. Sunday Times ran a feature on parents going out with strollers/prams just last month. It wrote about the ugly side of us parents using strollers to barge our way in or banging into people unnecessarily. Projecting parents in a negative light. If the national paper can write such negativities about parents and their kids, it tells you something about the pro-family mentality of Singaporeans.

2. Have you read how those people interviewed by Sunday Times commented about us? They said really nasty things. This shows the distaste of the people have for kids or family with kids. Where are the tolerance and understanding of these people? And the old lady incident is just one of the rude reactions I get from fellow Singaporeans. I have been on the receiving end of some nasty and un-refined behaviours of people. Pro-family mentality of Singaporeans? Duh!

3. When we come across a parent with three or more children, we don't give comments like "wow, that's great" or "that's nice". Instead we said,"wah, doing your national duty ah." Embracing pro-family culture?

There are simply too many points I can write about our not-so pro-family culture like work, infrastructure etc. But I just want to share that my feel about our society is that, the birthrate will still be below 2.0 even after all the financial packages the govt dished out.