[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/feminist-flashpoints-in-singapore-have-babies-but-only-the-right-kind\/#NewsArticle","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/feminist-flashpoints-in-singapore-have-babies-but-only-the-right-kind\/","headline":"Feminist flashpoints in Singapore: Have babies, but only the right kind","name":"Feminist flashpoints in Singapore: Have babies, but only the right kind","description":"This three-part series reflects on key turning points in Singapore\u2019s journey towards achieving gender equality. Here, writer Kellynn Wee focuses on the government\u2019s intervention in women\u2019s reproductive lives. She describes the Great Marriage Debate of 1983, how it relates to issues around motherhood, and its link to social engineering policies today. Sixteen-year-old Wang Lixin came […]","datePublished":"2021-03-24","dateModified":"2022-04-16","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/author\/kellynn-wee\/#Person","name":"Kellynn Wee","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/author\/kellynn-wee\/","identifier":238,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8c4206740f77ee610cee5f48fa7b2adc2b1dd5fdd5018d5725f6addc92a232c2?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8c4206740f77ee610cee5f48fa7b2adc2b1dd5fdd5018d5725f6addc92a232c2?s=96&d=mm&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"TheHomeGround Asia","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo_2021-07-22-222533.jpeg","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo_2021-07-22-222533.jpeg","width":640,"height":640}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/1616581356732_Feminist_Flashpoints_1280_X_626.jpg","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/1616581356732_Feminist_Flashpoints_1280_X_626.jpg","height":626,"width":1280},"url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/feminist-flashpoints-in-singapore-have-babies-but-only-the-right-kind\/","commentCount":"3285","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/feminist-flashpoints-in-singapore-have-babies-but-only-the-right-kind\/#Comment1","dateCreated":"2026-09-08 01:11:23","description":"User safety is a priority when participating in real money betting digitally, best canadian online casino bonuses<\/a> utilizes advanced encryption technology to safeguard all user details. 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Users typically look for a mix of safety and fun, which is exactly what a top-tier casino Canada should deliver.","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Tryvarvep","url":"https:\/\/onlinecasinonodepositbonus.us\/best-online-casino-in-canada"}},{"@type":"Comment","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/feminist-flashpoints-in-singapore-have-babies-but-only-the-right-kind\/#Comment10","dateCreated":"2026-09-07 20:15:55","description":"https:\/\/hairguardrx.com\/# buy cheap propecia prices","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Jamesnenny","url":""}}],"about":["Community","Local","Sex & Gender","Singapore"],"wordCount":1997,"keywords":["babies","birth rate","eugenics","feminism","great marriage debate","motherhood","reproductive policies"],"articleBody":"This three-part series reflects on key turning points in Singapore\u2019s journey towards achieving gender equality. Here, writer Kellynn Wee focuses on the government\u2019s intervention in women\u2019s reproductive lives. She describes the Great Marriage Debate of 1983, how it relates to issues around motherhood, and its link to social engineering policies today. Sixteen-year-old Wang Lixin came under fire recently for a Straits Times forum letter proposing that women be conscripted into Singapore\u2019s National Service \u2013 so that they would be more likely to meet men, get married, have children, and boost Singapore\u2019s birth rate.Ms Wang\u2019s comments lit up the internet, partly because we love talking about the kids we are not having. Our flagging fertility has become something of a national joke (consider Senior Minister of State\u2019s Josephine Teo\u2019s immortal comment about us not needing \u201cmuch space to have sex\u201d) but Singaporeans\u2019 desire to make babies is a matter of serious political interest.The Government anxiously peers into our bedrooms because not producing natal citizens means importing working-age labour from elsewhere to support our economy and our ageing population.High rates of migration challenge our national imagination of what our country should be and who should be allowed to call themselves \u201cSingaporean\u201d \u2013 a topic that has sparked xenophobic sentiments and frictions in our city-state.The reproduction of children is still seen as the province of women, who are expected to take on the primary role of nurturing and raising kids.The problem, then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew suggested in 1983, is that not only were we not having enough babies, we were not having the right kind of babies; intelligent, produced by married university-educated women, and mostly Chinese.So the People\u2019s Action Party began to act to create a nation in its intended image.The Great Marriage Debate: \u201cYou can\u2019t be a doctor and also bring up children\u201d The late-Prime Minister Lee’s National Day rally speech in 1983 included his reflections on what he expected out of Singapore\u2019s women: \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t get our women into jobs where they cannot, at the same time, be mothers.\u201cYou just can\u2019t be doing a full-time heavy job like that of a doctor or engineer and run a home and bring up children.\u201dA nationwide campaign in Singapore to encourage married couples to have children in the late-1980s. (Source: Ministry of Communications and Information, 1985-1990)According to sociologist Lenore Lyons (a leading scholar on the feminist movement in Singapore), the Government identified two social issues that needed serious remedying. First, there was an increasing number of unmarried women in Singapore\u2019s tertiary institutions. Second, there was a lower reproduction rate among Chinese women. These were considered to be critical problems that would lead to a loss of overall talent.As Mr Lee said in his speech, \u201cOur most valuable asset is in the ability of our people. Yet we are frittering away this asset through the unintended consequences of changes in our education policy and equal career opportunities for women. This has affected their traditional role as mothers.\u201dHis comments mourned women\u2019s inhabitation of new roles as participants in Singapore\u2019s blossoming new economy, and their exit from full-time motherhood, while also stoically recognising that female labour force participation was crucial to Singapore\u2019s continued success.In some ways, this precisely reflected the \u201csecond shift\u201d that women are expected to pull \u2013 a term coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, which refers to the fact that women are expected to participate fully as waged workers in the economy, then return home and get to their second jobs: that of mothering their children.This double burden often means that women receive lower wages and fewer advancement opportunities in their jobs, while still being expected to carry out the lion\u2019s share of housework and child-rearing.As political scientist Meredith Weiss comments, \u201cHowever aggressively chastised for their \u2018recalcitrant fertility\u2019, [Singaporean] women have had to fight for themselves to obtain full status in the labour force they have been prodded to augment.\u201dEugenicist thinking: Nature trumps nurtureThe late prime minister’s comments also reflected a eugenicist strain: That a person\u2019s capabilities are prominently determined by the genes of their parents, rather than the resources they had access to or the environment that they experienced growing up. People with ‘superior’ genes should thus be supported in their reproduction efforts, while people with ‘inferior’ genes should be discouraged from having children.In other words, nature trumps nurture.He said, \u201cIf we continue to reproduce ourselves in this lopsided way, we will be unable to sustain our present standards. Levels of competence will decline.\u201dGeraldine Heng and Janadas Devan made the subtext of these comments explicit. They tracked how class and race were \u201csuppressed categories of [Lee\u2019s] anxiety, since the women of recalcitrant fertility were by and large Chinese, upper- and middle-class professionals, while those of inordinate reproductive urges… comprised… working-class women of Malay and Indian ethnic origin.\u201dThe view that genes have a crucial role to play in the inheritance of intelligence has actually been widely discredited by the scientific community. The \u201ctwin studies\u201d that Mr Lee cited to support his policy decisions \u2013\u00a0\u00a0longitudinal studies that showed that twins raised in different environments often had similar outcomes \u2013 had, even in the 1970s, been dismissed as theoretically weak, partly the consequence of data fabrication and scientific fraud.Policies in placeThe late Singapore leader’s speech heralded a slew of policies aimed at encouraging some Singaporeans to have children, while disincentivising others from reproducing.Let us purge this way of thinking, a forum letter to the Straits Times, written in 1983 by a Female Graduate. (Source: The Straits Times, National Library of Singapore)At the National University of Singapore, entry requirements were lowered for male applicants in 1983 in order to increase the number of male students and to curb the \u201cproblem of having unmarried graduate women,\u201d as Professor Lim Pin, then vice-chancellor, described it.The PAP also introduced the Graduate Mothers\u2019 Priority Scheme in 1984, where children of university-educated women with at least three children were given priority to enter the primary schools of their choice. Married women with at least five O’level passes could also claim significant tax reliefs for their first three children.The Social Development Unit was established in January 1984 at the Ministry of Finance, aiming to matchmake university graduates in the public sector; in 1986, this scheme included graduates employed in the private sector.At the other end of the scale, a sterilisation incentive of S$10,000 was paid into the Central Providence Fund of women who had no ‘O’ level passes below the age of 30 \u2013 if they agreed to sterilisation after having the first or second child. This was provided her husband also did not have any ‘O’ level passes, and if they earned less than S$1,500 (US$1,113) per month combined.This cash grant was a highly attractive offer, often enough to cover the initial deposit for a small apartment.If a woman who had received the incentive gave birth to another child, she had to repay the $10,000 cash grant at the rate of 10 per cent compound interest per year. In Class C maternity wards \u2013 which often served women from lower-income backgrounds, delivery fees were higher for third or fourth children in the family.An incendiary responseThese policies attracted significant backlash and unusual public outcry: Enough for the PAP to lose a number of votes in the resulting elections in 1984. Most of these policies were scrapped in 1985.As part of a research project tracking women\u2019s responses to these overt attempts at influencing their reproductive decisions, sociologist Dr Lyons spoke to women who were outraged by these developments.She found that \u201cfor women in their twenties… being single was simply a reflection of their decision to pursue education and employment opportunities first. These women had not rejected marriage and motherhood; they merely postponed it. They were clearly angry at the Government\u2019s suggestion that they were a \u2018problem\u2019. After all, they had only followed the Government\u2019s own prescription to study and work hard… why, they asked, did the Government encourage them to be independent and assertive in the work place, but not in their personal lives?\u201dThe furore incited by Mr Lee\u2019s 1983 speech was so incendiary that it prompted the creation of the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), Singapore\u2019s first explicitly feminist organisation, which published a policy paper refuting his approach and offering alternative suggestions.Leaning in today The societal expectations placed on women to perfectly balance parenting and waged employment, and to do it without appearing to break a sweat, is a perennial feminist issue.In an era where women are increasingly invested in charting new paths, it is a thorny issue to talk about having kids: desiring or thinking about marriage and children can feel like a capitulation to stereotypical gender roles.Yet of course people are interested in having children, and make strategic decisions around timing, resources, and emotional readiness.Khoo Choon Yen, 30, was married for two years, settled into her flat, and established herself in a new job before she felt ready to have a child with her husband. The final reassurance she needed came from her company\u2019s family-friendly policies.\u201cFlexible work hours, the company asking us to take time-off to spend time with family, being super excited when I announced my pregnancy \u2013 all of that put my mind at ease about what it meant for me to take on a new identity as a mother,\u201d she says.Beyond the support of her workplace, being a full-time working mother \u2013 a term that Ms Khoo dislikes, because, as she put it, \u201ceven without paid work, mothering and fathering are really full-time jobs!\u201d \u2013 meant having to rely on existing childcare provisions, such as infant care services staffed by reliable edu-carers and subsidised by the Government.Despite this, Ms Khoo comments that the limited length of paternity leave given to fathers in Singapore (eligible fathers are entitled to two weeks paid paternity leave, while mothers get four months) was something that she struggled to overcome. While appreciating the care offered by her extended family, she felt that the emotional turmoil that new mothers go through is something that only husbands can help with.\u201cActive fathering is inherently more challenging if they don\u2019t have the same amount of parental leave,\u201d she said. \u201cState policies are sorely needed to set the tone for what\u2019s minimally expected to support families.\u201dWhile the era of overt eugenicist policymaking is over, the Singapore Government has not shied away from continuing to try to influence its citizens’ family-making decisions \u2013 with some babies still more privileged than others.For example, the Home Ownership Plus Education (HOPE) scheme continues to incentivise families from lower-income households to remain small by tying cash benefits to family sizes. These benefits are so attractive that the scheme has been described as coercive.For a long time, unwed single mothers used to be differentially treated \u2013\u00a0 for example, they received fewer weeks of maternity leave and did not receive tax incentives \u2013 to \u201cencourage and support parenthood within the context of marriage… the prevailing societal norm in Singapore, and one which we seek to reflect and preserve.\u201dThese policies have moved in a more heartening direction as the Government has, in recent years, slowly expanded the same benefits to single parents.But having children goes beyond cash incentives and tax rebates.As long as current policy and social structures signal that women are expected to carry out second shifts and be the primary manager of the household, and that parenting remains a female province rather than a responsibility equally shared, women who have worked very hard to find freedom from gendered expectations will continue to think twice about motherhood.The second part of this series will be published on 30 March.Join the conversations on THG’s\u00a0Facebook\u00a0and\u00a0Instagram, and get the latest updates via\u00a0Telegram."},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Destinations","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Singapore","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/\/singapore\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Feminist flashpoints in Singapore: Have babies, but only the right kind","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/feminist-flashpoints-in-singapore-have-babies-but-only-the-right-kind\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]