It is evident from many surveys and research done by people that more and more Singaporeans are marrying later. Other than that well known fact, the divorce rates in Singapore are also increasing. Did you know that Singapore is actually #16 on the list of World’s highest divorce rate? It means that out of 1000 married individuals, 0.8 of them divorce sometime later during the union. I agree on this fact.
Well, let’s talk about Why.
It’s simple really. The growth of the society and Singapore’s market is increasing at a rapid speed that one back in the 70′s would never imagine. This would cause many to focus more on their career. Honestly speaking, if I was single and 21, with a good job and I’ve been doing well in my career and enjoying at the same time, I would not really think about marriage. To many, it would feel like a burden. However, if I were attached, maybe I would think of marriage. Because being in a relationship will change one’s perspective on marriage. If you enjoy being in a relationship, you would want to get married would you?
Recently, I attended a marriage seminar. The main idea of the whole seminar was to convince youth to marry at a younger age.
The need for this seminar was as the recent trends show that many young adults choose to marry late and are even choosing to not wed.
Through the whole seminar, the main points that I picked up from was that marrying young is a good thing and that you are never too young for marriage.
However, this is a point I strongly disagree on.
Firstly, not all young people are mature enough to get into a relationship even, lest prepared for a huge commitment such as marriage. Promoting marriage may cause greater society problems like higher divorce rates and even an increase in abortion rates. Plus, this may change youth’s perspective of marriage in whole. They would think that a marriage would not last and that it is not worth it to get married. Right now, many youths already have the perspective that true love can never be found. Even so, they are still young and they may regret this decision in the later part of their life.
Secondly, many feel that not being financially stable is not good for a marriage. Many feel that they would want to be independent as a couple and have a shared identity instead of constantly staying with their parents, which they may not like. They feel that with their parents around, there are many things that they may not be able to do as a couple. Furthermore, without finances, they will be unable to start a family even if they desire so. And what if one-day contraception failed and a baby pops out? They may even choose to abort the child which will have a impact on our birth rate. I believe everyone wants to be financially prepared for that after marriage.
Thirdly, many youths want to focus on their career first. Being young people, we have many dreams and aspirations that we would want to fulfil. Being married may hinder youths from being able to complete their dreams and aspirations. It will be an excess burden to them as marriage is no simple game.
Lastly, youths feel that a marriage will take up quite a large amount of time thus it may affect their social life, which is rather important to youths these days. They may not be able to balance the time they need to spend to cultivate the relationship with their spouses and maintain the friendship that they have with their friends at the same time. This will also cause a high level of emotional stress that may strain the couple’s relationship. Thus contributing to divorce rates.
I feel that the topics approached during this seminar may not be too suitable for teenagers our age, but it should aim to direct more to the young working class adults. Besides, after attending this seminar, most of us choose to act as though we did not attend it and it did not make any impact on us to have a change in our ideas and concepts. Honestly speaking, I felt that it was a waste of my time as I could have spent the time doing something more productive like studying or doing my assignments. The whole topic of marriage was not discussed clearly and it did not really feel like a discussion but more of imputing in us that the idea of getting married at 17 and having kids at out age is acceptable and encouraged. Although it did make me think about why would people marry later and it actually sounds okay to marry young, I felt that it was not a very productive session for me.
Though the need of having to marry young and increasing birth rate is important, I feel that it is not necessary to drill in these thoughts while we are still studying, as this will be a distraction for us. Contrary to what our parents always tell us, we would be thinking of love and getting married and we may not do well in school, which will affect our future. This in all does not benefit our society or us.
The only thing that the seminar’s discussion got me to think about is if marriage is really able to last. On the session with Mrs Chia, she shares of how her marriage is able to last that long as it is a give and take situation. She also stated that there is no such things as soul mates, or perfect life partner and a perfect marriage. However, as many say, youths are becoming more and more self-centered, I wonder if the next generation will help to increase or decrease the rate of divorce in Singapore.
It did change my opinions on my little girl concepts of finding my prince charming one day.
oooooooooooooooooooo and I really didn’t think that it’d be us… but…
