More singles, late marriages 'worrying trends'

http://hojinx.blogspot.com/

Perhaps many of you have heard this before, but I am going to talk about it again today. And the topic is late marriages, and Singapore’s aging population.

Despite of the many perks the government actually offers to people who give birth to children, it does not seem to be particularly effective, as we monitor the birth rate and various other statistics, as shown in the newspaper article.

From the article, we can see that the proportion of singles over the ages of 30 to 39 have increased by quite a significant amount over the course of just 15 years. Also, the median age of marriage, median age at which Singaporean women give birth, and the proportion of married but childless Singaporean women aged 40-49 have all increased. With the above-stated trends, it is only natural that the average number of children born to married Singaporean women has decreased.

I agree with sociologist Paulin Tay-Straughan’s suggestion, that networking would benefit more than the current matchmaking approach. That is to say, we do not work towards getting two people together. Instead, we give everyone a more comfortable environment that supports getting life-partners, so that they will be more inclined towards finding the one for them.
Currently, I believe the biggest problem that couples face in deciding whether to have babies or not is actually the amount of money it takes raise a child. It actually takes a lot of money to raise a child, all the way till they are old enough to earn money on their own. People nowadays are relatively more responsible than the past. Before having sex, they would think about whether they can afford to raise a child. If not, they would do whatever is required to reduce the chances of pregnancy. It is not like the past, where the general public hardly considered the consequences of their actions. With that, people generally do not wish to have babies till they are certain that they are capable of raising a child. Even so, it is unlikely there would be more than one child.

An alternative solution would be to promote social interaction between the people, and allow the working population more holidays so that they can get out more to get to know more people. This would very likely be beneficial towards raising the number of marriages.

However, it is not that ineffective, as My Wong also stated, that recent incentives – which include a parenthood package of $575 million in 2005 – had made an impact to arrest the decline of the fertility rate, with more babies being born in 2005 than the year before.

I believe that the monetary incentive would also play a great role in increasing the birth rate of Singapore. In this ever-changing world, the importance of money has never been greater. You don’t have anything if you don’t have money. Therefore, I believe monetary incentives would reap good results.

Why kids need sex education? Girl, 9, pregnant

http://news.asiaone.com.sg/st/st_20070301_95815.html

When flipping through the newspaper, my attention was completely captured by this article. How a nine-year-old girl could get pregnant completely escaped me.

This article undoubtedly shows us how important it is for parents and schools alike to provide sex education to the students. According to this article, the condition where pre-teens exhibit signs of puberty is called precocious puberty. This nine-year-old girl has this condition, but her parents did not educate her on what she’s going through. They felt that she was “too young to know at her age”.

This is a very wrong mindset. I understand that the parents are worried about letting their children know so much at such a young age, but it is actually more dangerous for the children NOT to know anything about what she’s going through.

Imagine a girl with precocious puberty. If she is not told about what she is going through, it is very likely that she might actually experiment around with her body, either alone or with someone else. It is very dangerous to let her experiment around with her body like that. As long as the school and the parents do enough to educate the girl, I believe that she would not act irresponsibly.

Parents usually preoccupy themselves with “what would our kid do if we tell her all those stuff!” But they fail to see the other side of the picture, where the child would be asking herself “what is this?”, and then when their parents refuse to tell her, she would be left with two choices: asking around, or trying to find out for herself.

I agree with Ms Jabal to a large extent. There is actually no such thing as being “too young to know”. All the students would need to be educated about sex education, but the problem is which is the appropriate age to entrust the students with these information so that they can be counted on not to misuse the knowledge they have been given.

I personally think that the students should only be educated when they reach puberty. This way, they are only granted the knowledge when they require it. If so, it is the parents’ responsibility to find out if your child has reached puberty. The school should also provide parents with the option of leaving the school to provide sex education o the students. Then, it is up to the parents whether they want to alert the school about their child’s condition.

It is important for the school and the parents to work hand in hand, as they would be able to watch the kid throughout most of the day, especially if it’s a case of precocious puberty. It would reduce the chances of the kid being led the wrong way by others. But firstly, parents must be observant, and open towards teaching their child about sex education.

Trial

Hey, this is to inform whoever is reading that I have already done the introduction course to blogging, and know enough information to allow me to blog on my own. This is so that I am able to do "other activities" from now on!