Even if society were moving in the right direction, Dr Kalpana likened the women’s responses in IPS’ survey to a “kind of pushback” against what they have observed for a long time.
To this, Dr Puthucheary said: “Well, I think that if a young woman says she wants to concentrate on her career, I think that’s a valid choice.
“But likewise, if a young woman says, ‘I want to raise a family, and I want to take time away from my career’, I think we shouldn’t penalise her for that. I think that’s the wrong way to do it.
“The ideal would be that you do it all, do everything — but unfortunately, our biology isn’t set up for that. We’re now living till our 80s, we have a long career trajectory.
“Unfortunately, childbearing age hasn’t changed, so that’s a natural challenge that young women have.”
He hopes that Singapore can be a society where every opportunity is put on the table, where “you can be anything, you can do anything”.
“(As a teenage girl in Singapore), you may have an additional struggle later on in life to make a choice about how you navigate that path (of pregnancy and parenthood).
“And I think the entire family should help you navigate that path. So I get back to my original one-liner ‘Too Long Didn’t Read’ version… that men need to do more.”
On how this can be achieved, panellists at an earlier discussion on youth and family at the conference offered some suggestions.
Dr Shannon Ang, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University’s School of Social Sciences, said that couples ought to have “difficult conversations” about re-negotiating their roles in the family.
Mr Yuvan Mohan, a council member at Families for Life and the National Youth Council, said that this may include discussions even on how chores such as cleaning the house and doing the dishes should be split.
These are important because couples may hold different perspectives.
He also said that having a “community of care” may help men and women engage in such conversations while they take on greater responsibilities in jointly navigating work and parenting.
A community of care refers to an extended community of carers that encompasses people who are not relatives or who are individuals beyond one’s nuclear family.
This means that couples may turn to older friends and mentors to “understand what they are doing, mistakes they have made, or things that they have learned, and then implement those lessons in (the couple’s) life right now”, he added.
.png?itok=IEnc60xx "Commentary: Marriage does not provide blanket consent for unwanted sex | Video")
