Singapore Parenting Congress 2008

I note that Mediacorp, a Singaporean Government organization, is promoting the Singapore Parenting Congress 2008. This is predictable in the light of the Prime Minister's National Day speech, in which he said that Singapore should do more to help create the right environment for parents.

The Parenting Congress has a range of talks across many parenting issues, with such titles as: "Talking with today's teens"; "Why can't we get along? Managing Parent-teen conflict."; "When words fall on deaf ears."; "Knowing your children better: what works and what doesn't."; "Staying strong as a couple while raising teens."; "Why don't we talk anymore? Family and work-life challenges."; "Conflict resolution for teenagers."; "Saving the parent-child relationship."; "Staying connected with your teenager."; "Smart parenting."

Seeing all these talks, I gathered the impression that the Government is getting serious about its intentions to support the family and strengthen family life. By arranging this Congress, they are disseminating information which could help many families deal with the issues that arise in many families as children grow up.

But then I noticed something unexpected: they are charging for it. To listen to their words of wisdom, an individual must pay 18 dollars for a ticket and 24 dollars for a couple. What was not clear was whether a "ticket" meant admission to one talk only - or to the whole series. Knowing how they generally think, I assume that it is one ticket per talk. Now, that is quite expensive if one wishes to visit several talks. It also makes clear something else: the Government, embodied as it is by Mediacorp, is not yet serious about supporting the family. If it was, this kind of Parenting Congress would be a FREE public service. There are ten talks. At 18 dollars each, that makes 180 dollars for a parent to attend them all; 240 dollars were both parents to attend. That, to me, seems far too much for information which should be freely and publicly available in a nation that is truly serious about supporting family life.

If Singapore is going to crack the problem of a falling native population (Singapore's total fertility rate is only 1.29, leaving each generation much smaller than the one before, excluding immigrants.), it must change its mindset with regards to parents. Parents are not a source of revenues to be milked - at least they should not be seen as such - they are the source of the future of Singapore and should be SUPPORTED in every way possible, to make their challenges less of a challenge.

Singapore has such a low fertility rate precisely because it is not a family friendly place. It is too expensive to raise children in Singapore. So many things - such as healthcare and education - which are FREE in many other developed countries with higher fertility are expensive in Singapore. In this small nation, even parenting information comes at a high price: nothing here is without a fee, without a profit potential for someone. The irony of all of this is that by focussing on short-term gain, the powers-that-be ensure that there is NO LONG-TERM FUTURE for Singapore. If raising a child is made to be as expensive as possible (which seems to be the general idea of the present system) then potential parents will continue to do what they are now doing: not having children in the first place. People will only begin to have more children, when it becomes financially less punishing for them to do so.

Singapore's Government has not shown itself able to think in ways that actually support elements of the population, in the past. Unless it changes the system so as to be supportive of parents, in Singapore, native born Singaporeans will continue to be a rare commodity.

As it stands, Singapore has no true future for a very simple and unavoidable reason: the next generation is only about 60 per cent of the size it needs to be to maintain the population base. In other words, in a few generations, at this non-replacement rate, there won't be any Singaporeans at all. It will be a dead nation. That is the effect of the policies surrounding parenting, to date. It remains to be seen whether the Government has the vision, the determination and the will to expend resources to ensure that Singapore has a future - for without the patter of little feet across the land, there is no such future.

The fees for the Singapore Parenting Congress 2008 are a bad sign. They are a sign that the Government has not yet learnt what parents actually need. The last thing they need, in oh-so-expensive Singapore - is another cost to pay out. It is time to think of parenting as a national public service - and to support it as one. Parents do something very important: they ensure that a nation has a future. I can think of nothing more important than that.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений

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