Why did the populace resist hegemonic intervention with regard to procreation, in their lives?
© Edwin Ng 2001
The context of discourse
Central to any discussion of the state in Singapore is
the now familiar definition of the state as authoritarian (Rodan, c1993), as
Confucianist and as "Confucianising" (Chua, 1995). Moreover, Government
intervention in the social space constituted by Singaporeans embodies the rationality
of pragmatism, whose "economic instrumentality" operates on the contingencies
of a particular situation rather than on the basis of any inviolate principles
(Ibid: 1995). Therefore, the ideological orientation of the government constitutes
a system of control that acts coercively not only on the mind, but also on the
body of the population.
The Confucianist orientation engenders a specific role formation between the
population and the state, and between the population itself and their children.
The foremost consequence of a Confucianist ideology is the perpetuation of hierarchy,
and more specifically the maintenance of patriarchy. The population itself is
subjectivised; in the same manner that fealty is yielded by vassals to their
feudal lord, constituting a sort of natural order that proceeds from the state's
survivalist psyche. The state is tantamount to a superpatriarch (Wee in Stevens
(ed.), c1995), with the power of life and death over the population. This mode
of interpretation can be extended to children, whose very lives as it were,
are at the mercy of their fathers, and by further extension to the state, as
overlord. Confucius said: "If the father says the son must die, then the
son must die. If the emperor says that the subject must die, then the subject
must die." (Ibid, c1995:187).
Moreover the ethos of pragmatism permeates the law, such that the law becomes
an instrument of social control and a rectifier of social behaviour - the government
governs through the law rather than by the law (Chua, 1995). The juxtaposition
of the law, Confucianism and pragmatism results in a matrix of relations that
tends to privilege the state (and to a lesser extent the parents), over the
child. And as such, the value that accrues to children is defined by the potential
economic benefit of the child to the nation, as well as the parents. Children
are thus valued as wealth creators (and consequently devalued as wealth consumers).
The development agenda for a new nation-state such as Singapore is therefore,
the ideology shaping the preconceived molds for the number and type of children
to be born as "contributions to national progress" (Wee in Stevens
(ed.), c1995).
Discursive practices in population planning
A pervasive ideology of the People's Action Party (PAP)
leadership has been its continued self representation as a corruption-free bureaucracy.
The stark all-white uniform is connotative of a lack of self-interest. The trust
in this moral self representation has been efficacious in returning the Party
to power, and since 1959 has constituted the government to the present day.
Not only have the ruling elite commanded the moral legitimacy to govern; its
political dominance is daily reconstituted by the success they have achieved
with the economy. The emphasis that the Party comprises moral managers with
the technical expertise to manage the economy has not been lost on the nation.
One would be tempted to state that ideologically, there was consensus regarding
the population policy spanning the years 1959 to 1983. The slew of slogans from
the "Stop at Two"/"Boy or Girl - Two is Enough" campaign
resonate even to the present day. Furthermore, the population has been unwilling
or unable to replace itself since 1975. However, if the "Stop at Two"
campaign proved as efficacious as it did in curbing population growth, its sister
campaign, staged in recent years to encourage population growth should be just
as successful in promoting population growth. As it turns out, the converse
happens to be true.
Interestingly, "Stop at Two" signifies a command emanating from the
centre. It assumes coerciveness in the various legislation governing the reproductive
function of the population, particularly women. Abortion was legalized. Accouchement
fees for hospital births were progressively pegged to birth order, such that
the third child cost more than the first and home births were banned by law
so that no one would escape the hospital net (Wee in Stevens (ed.), c1995).
Paid maternity leave was allowed for the first two children only and priority
in admissions to elite schools was also restricted to the first- and secondborn.
And in the event that a woman births a third child, priority Primary One registration
rights for that child is suspended unless the mother sterilizes herself (The
Straits Times, 2000). Leave is still granted to civil servants who sterilize
themselves.
Class distinctions figure importantly in the administration's strategy to curb
the growth of the lower-classes after 1983. The Small Family Incentive Scheme
(Ibid, c1995) would be awarded to women who satisfy the following criteria:
(a) was sterilized on or after 1 June 1984 (b) below 30 years of age (c) no
more than 2 children (d) neither she nor her husband must not possess any "O"
level passes (e) neither she nor her husband should earn more than $750 a month.
In the event that the woman has a third child she is obliged to pay the $10
000 awarded to her in addition to the 10% compound interest per annum. The Scheme
has since been renamed The Small Families Improvement Scheme and a broader range
of benefits are paid out to women who satisfy the above criteria. The Ministry
of Home Affairs, Community Development and Sports (MCDS) is silent on the $10
000 penalty (http://www.mcds.gov.sg/) but the educational bursaries paid out
under the new scheme applies only to children who are studying in pre-universities,
polytechnics and institutes of technical education. In addition, "The Small
Families Improvement Scheme helps low income couples improve and upgrade themselves
by keeping their families small" (Ibid.). The eugenic intent of this specific
scheme is apparent.
Hegemony in fertility regulation
The shift in an anti-natalist policy to a class-biased
pronatalist policy was the result of a culmination of a number of factors. Population
decline was an immediate problem. More importantly, the perception that not
only was the population not producing enough babies - they were also not producing
the desired ones. Hence, the Graduate Mothers' Scheme. The backlash from the
scheme however was sufficiently strong enough to provoke a complete about-turn
on the scheme in the short time it was implemented.
Since the implementation of a class-biased pronatalist policy proved to be particularly
problematic and highly politicised for the government, a generalized pronatalist
policy was introduced. This "Baby Bonus" scheme is divided into two
tiers: a flat deposit consisting of a $500 incentive for a second child at birth,
and $1000 for a third child at birth. For the next five years, the same amount
will be deposited for each child bringing the total cash incentive to $3000
for a secondborn and $6000 for a thirdborn child in the same family. The second
tier consists of a cooperative savings scheme called the Children's Development
Account. The state will contribute an equivalent amount for every deposit into
this account, subject to a cap of $1000 for the second child and $2000 for the
third child (http://gwbweb.wustl.edu/).
The Baby Bonus scheme has been the culmination of an ideological trajectory
spanning almost two decades. From the beginning of the shift in the natalist
policies, the population at large has been deluged with propaganda expounding
the value of the family. Interestingly, the push for population growth contrasts
vividly with the high-handed "Stop at Two" campaign. There exists
a painstaking effort to represent the interest of the nation as the collective
interest. Various survivalist arguments were disseminated via the news media,
particularly the potential lack of manpower to sustain the economy (part of
the wider "people is our resource" discourse), national defence considerations
and the aging demography.
The state's attempts to mould the public consciousness, with the implementation
of a pervasive, inundating media campaign can be said to constitute a discursive
formation (Foucault, 1969). The various representations in the media are epistemic
of a model, moral family i.e. heterosexual, legal, nuclear and reproducing.
The representations themselves vary from time to time, reflecting a gradual
ideological shift from a eugenic discourse to a superficially all-inclusive
pronatalism. The various texts from the television and poster media advanced
the appeal of marriage and married life, and furthermore of the advantages of
having children. A selection of these texts is analyzed here:
a. A young man and a young lady exchange glances at a restaurant.
A friend of the man happens to know the lady so the both of them move over to
the lady and the man introduces himself to her. They then begin to sit and chat
animatedly. The viewer receives the impression that they seem to be genuinely
interested in each other.
b. Another TV advertisement shows a man hard at work in the office and there
is an indication on his facial expression that he is stressed. The next scene
shows the couple's empty home and the room they have prepared for their prospective
baby. The wife is then shown giving birth to a child, and the husband hovers
close over his wife and the new-born, smiling and holding her hand. "Children
life would be empty without them." echoes towards the end.
c. Posters showing an adolescent, attractive girl applying make-up. "She's
having a date", the poster remarks, "but it's not with her boyfriend".
The next half of the poster depicts the same girl hand in hand with her parents
walking down a street.
d. The last advertisement to mention here shows a young 'uns soccer match in
progress while the proud parents of the young protagonist looks on. The time
comes for him to score a penalty goal and he manages to put the ball into the
net. Next, we see the boy and his parents smiling as they walk behind him while
he kicks the football around. 'Family
cherish the moments.' is the final
resonance.
The advertisements utilizes an understated approach to represent the family as a romantic encounter that would be meaningless without the presence of significant others, particularly the child. The family as desired and desirable is sold to the general audience, who are expected to consume the family as they would a product. Moreover, material success and the ideologies of mass consumption are undermined when juxtaposed against the emotional wealth and fulfillment that a moral, happy family can bring.
Resistance and disengagement
The shift in the state's position regarding the present
population policies was markedly different from its previous bureaucratic measures.
Instead, the execution of ideological consensus with regard to state's goals
appears to assume priority. Increasingly, the political repercussions from the
administration of the Old Guard materialized through the ballot box (especially
the elections of 1984/88). The new leadership lead by Goh Chock Tong promised
greater consultation with the public regarding governmental policies with a
progressive restructuring in the highly centralized decision-making process.
The state realizes the liberalizing effect of a nuanced and complex society
moulded by higher education and varied life experiences. Ironically, the regime's
economic success has spawned a middle class ready to contest the state's ideological
intervention in their private space. While at the beginning of the state-initiated
industrialization program, the interests of the population and the state was
similarly aligned i.e. for survival, the stranglehold on the public consciousness
that economic issues used to command has lost its power. Moreover, the memory
of the harsh laws and disincentives applied to the body of the population remains
vivid and therein arises the concomitant association with the current fertility
campaign with the repressiveness of the past.
"You are mentally reversing a major policy. There is a lot of residual
anger and frustration from the young adults today whose parents had to be sterilized
and who could have had a sister or brother if only it was allowed," recounts
Mr Basskaran Nair, the former government propagandist for the "Stop at
Two" campaign (The Straits Times, 2000).
"They have been brainwashed for years and can no longer count or see beyond
two. They still remember the embarrassment of mothers who had three or more.
It may take another generation to overcome this," notes gynaecologist Paul
Tan (The Straits Times, 2000).
The stigma of being bad citizen-parents has been inscribed into the psyche of
the populace. The generation birthed during the period of the "Stop at
Two" campaign remember the humiliation of their parents having to toe the
government line and seek to avoid continued intervention in their own lives.
Moreover, women continue to bear the brunt of the continued surveillance on
their bodies and resent being told what to do and when to do it. Female labour
was appropriated for the economy whenever a shortfall in manpower occurred,
and female bodies were then again extorted to produce babies whenever population
growth rates declined. When surplus labour occurs, women were the first to be
retrenched - and told they were better off housewives and mothers. Then there
was a time most women remember lucidly... they had produced too many babies.
At an Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) public forum on population
matters in May, its president Dana Lam recalls that the question "What
will make us start a family?" was posted. The short and sharp answer from
the floor was, "Get off our backs." (The Straits Times, 2000)
Under the Confucianist discourse, the value of a child has been argued to be
tied to her/her potential economic value. The child is not loved for who he/she
is, marking the absence of a moral system that values the child intrinsically.
The prevalence of love marriages and the gradual erosion of patriarchy indicate
the reversal of traditional modes of valuing the child. The decision to procreate
is no longer gender-biased but number specific.
Industrialization, globalization and the concomitant homogenization of culture
dispersed values that undermined the Confucianist discourse. Individualism,
mass consumption and commodity fetishism contributed a discursive limitation
on family size. The creation of a prosperous capitalist economy, with a compulsory
savings scheme (the Central Provident Fund) has removed the child as an essential
insurance against old age. In a consumer culture, the child is seen more as
a wealth consumer than a wealth creator, since there exists a variety of financial
instruments to ensure viability in old age. The value of a child then consists
in his/her emotional value, and how that value brings a sense of psychological
well-being to the parents as well as recreate the moment and romance of marriage/married
life.
"We still want to live in condominiums, buy our children toys without thinking
twice and send them to university. It doesn't really mean that the kid will
starve," remarks public relations manager Monica Tan, 30 (The Straits Times,
2000).
Lasch (1977) adds that the family did not simply evolve in response to industrialization,
but was deliberately transformed by the intervention of policy planners. Public
housing evolved to inhibit large families through space constraints. This served
not only to nuclearized the family but to also to proletarianize it. The sale
of wage-labour in the market meant that parents do not possess the time or the
resources to indulge the care giving needed to support a large family. The constraints
are felt most acutely since policy planners intended the creation of a class-based,
achievement-oriented, neolocal workforce. Without the support of a broad-based
kinship network to assist in care giving when parents are absent, large-sized
families are no longer possible.
While the PAP has garnered a surplus of political legitimacy through its economic
policies, its interference in the lives of the populace has provoked a degree
of non-compliance and resistance that will however, not translate into a removal
of the party from power. Middle class interests coincide with that of the state
agenda, i.e. the advancement of economic interests. In the absence of alternative
forms of state power, the populace can only disengage.
Frederick George Bailey (1993:8), "I am thinking not of explicit challenges,
revolution or rebellion or constitutional challenge through the courts or through
elections, but rather of disengagement, a convenient term for an unobtrusive
or indirect way in which individuals protect themselves from organizational
or institutional exploitation."
"A disengager is an active calculating guardian of his own space, protecting
his identity against organizational trespassing. He lies and cheats and he steals;
can be a moral person but his morality does not always coincide with
that of the organization that has him in chains." (Ibid: 9)
Collectively the populace is disengaging, out of a belief that their personal
agenda takes precedence over state goals. They realize, perhaps not as explicitly
as Bailey, that their space is theirs to govern and structural constraints imposed
on them by existing social and political arrangements make it impossible to
conform to state demands. Families may be willing to trade their freedom away
if the price is right. But the price is not yet right; because for those families
with two children, the Baby Bonus works out to $2 per child per day over a six-year
period - at the end of which, a parent's duty is by no means done yet (The Straits
Times, 2000).
With their continual resistance to the prevailing discourse, the populace is
sabotaging the system. Reflexively, they know their oppression - and they will
not bow. The cost is too high and therefore they will not yield. As Berger puts
it neatly, "For a moment we see ourselves as puppets indeed. But then we
grasp a decisive difference between the puppet theatre and our own drama. Unlike
the puppets, we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up
and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. In this act lies the
first step towards freedom." (1963)
Bibliography
1. Rodan, Garry (ed.) Singapore changes guard: social, political and economic
directions in the 1990s Melbourne: Longman Cheshire; New York: St. Martin's
Press, c1993
2. Chua, Beng Huat Communitarian ideology and democracy
in Singapore London;
New York: Routledge, 1995.
3. Stevens, Sharon (ed.) Children and the politics of culture Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, c1995
4. Foucault, Michel The Archaeology of Knowledge Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. London: Tavostock, 1972.
5. The Great Baby Debate - Too loud, too little, too late? The Straits Times (Singapore) 22 September 2000.
6. Lasch, Christopher. Haven in a heartless world: the family besieged N.Y.: Basic Books, c1977.
7. Berger, Peter L. Invitation to sociology; a humanistic perspective. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963.
8. Bailey, Frederick G. The kingdom of individuals: an essay on self-respect and social obligation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.
Websites
1. http://www.mcds.gov/
2. http://gwbweb.wustl.edu/