Page 234 - Beyond Methods

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Contextualizing linguistic input
April 21, 2001
Singapore, Hoping for a Baby Boom,
Makes Sex a Civic Duty
By Seth Mydans
Singapore, April 15—Here in strait-laced Singapore, it’s the new patriotism: have sex.
Alarmed by its declining birthrate, this tiny city-state of just four million people is urging its citizens to multiply as fast as they can.
“We need more babies!” proclaimed Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong last fall. The world, he said, is in danger of running short of Singaporeans.
And, Singapore being Singapore, a campaign has begun that fo- cuses more on people’s financial calculations than on that strange, hard-to-quantify thing called romance.
A government office, the Working Committee on Marriage and Procreation, has developed monetary and workplace incentives that go into effect this month. The idea is to persuade people that having children is a better deal than going without.
In what it calls the Baby Bonus Scheme, the government is of- fering cash to couples who have second and third children. It is extending maternity leave and adding a brief paternity leave for government workers. It is experimenting with flexible working hours to make child rearing easier. It is offering special deals on apartment rentals to young couples.
The local press has enthusiastically gotten with the program, filling its pages with encomiums to the joys not only of parenthood but of sex. “Let’s Get on the Love Wagon,” urged a headline in The Straits Times not long after Mr. Goh’s speech.
It meant that literally. The article gave tips for having sex in the back seat of a car complete with directions to “some of the darkest, most secluded and most romantic spots for Romeos and Juliets.” It suggested covering the windows with newspapers for privacy.
The problem with this, some Singaporeans pointed out, is birth control. Having sex in the back of a car does not necessarily mean helping the city-state to improve its demographic profile by having babies.
Like citizens of other nations with rising living standards, Sin- gaporeans have been choosing for two decades now to have smaller families. The birthrate has fallen to 1.5 children per woman of child- bearing age—far below the 2.5 needed to maintain the population level. (Incomplete).