Desmond Lee’s report about the social/familial map is rather depressing. Family is supposed to be the fundamental pillar of society and the landscape for it doesn’t look that bright.
Forget about cohabitation, look at what Desmond termed as the “reconstituted families”.
He said that more people are divorced and then they remarry. “In reconstituted households, one or both parents have children from previous marriage, some can be young and some can be grown up and they may live without their children, or with their children, or with their step-children in a new family.”
As a family sociologist, Prof Paulin Straughan urges her students to “first define family.” What is it? She wrote: “Family, in sociological jargon, is a social construct. It is just a word, a label, that over time we have given a definition.”
So, over time, is this union in our changing context redefined?
Now, let me be absolutely clear that there is nothing wrong with reconstituted families as described above. There is life after divorce, sometimes, a better one, a flourishing one with step-children to boot.
The depressing outlook comes from Desmond’s next observation. He noted the following trends: -
“There are households where we see grandparents effectively taking on the role of parents, to look after their grandchildren, because the parents are no longer in the picture, for a variety of reasons. This could be because of divorce, abandonment, demise or incarceration of the parents. The grandparents often apply to be legal guardians and play the role of parents.”
Another observation is this: “...we also see households where the older siblings exhibit parentified behaviour, or they behave like parents to their younger siblings - they have to step up to perform the role played by parents, even at a young age, because the parents are absent.”
Desmond added: “I have seen some cases, for example, where siblings have to fend for themselves because their parents divorce, each remarry, form their own families, and neither side wants the children from their initial families.”
Lesson? One. What is becoming of our social fabric upon which families form a foundational part of it? Is this a sign or the beginning of the breakdown in the family structure or just a passing trend?
I may fall foul of being an alarmist here should such examples (as cited above) form just a small portion of the overall familial structure and they do not cause a major dent in the society. But what if they are not? What if there is more than meets the eye?
Professor Cherian George wrote an article side by side entitled “Beware the gated version of the Singapore Dream”, and I believe he has raised a relevant point about our society today.
He talked about the author, Pankaj Mishra, who wrote the book Age of Anger, and he said Mishra “suggests that the 1990s neoliberal wave sparked aspirations among people everywhere that could not be satisfied, because they were based on a materialist ethic and mindless emulation, not genuine needs or sustainability.”
And “the resulting resentment - a mix of envy, humiliation and powerlessness - is poisoning civil society, undermining political liberty, and causing a global turn to authoritarianism and chauvinism.”
Professor Cherian George notes that we Singaporeans have embraced this neoliberal trend as a social more or ethic and the result is a form of escapism from the life we are quick to disavow to satisfy our own self-driven appetites - from the time we graduate.
He puts it this way: “social mobility for most of us means escaping the masses, out of the void deck into the country club; into ever more exclusive circles where we can be increasingly fashion-conscious about what we eat and wear; finicky about the neighbourhoods where we live; and fastidious about our forms of worship.”
He noted that Mishra has a term for this, and it is called “revolutionary individualism” or “the revolution of aspiration.”
As a result, I foresee that we have become superficial or a glossing-through generation where we subscribe to everything but commits to nothing. It is a classic two-mile-wide, three-inch-thick generation. That may just account for why nothing really satisfies us.
Marital bonds become a sentence, one can’t wait to get out. Friendships without benefits become dull or unexciting. Career without the fast track promotion becomes a snare, like the Dead Sea. Religion with all the demands of discipline and self-denial becomes stifling, choking. Parenthood becomes an invasion into one’s privacy and freedom to be - children becomes a burden, not an aspiration that far exceeds that which is materialistic and superficial.
And not to forget that charity if not done to much fanfare and recognition becomes self-defeating, meaningless. This is the manifestation of the revolutionary individual with his revolution of aspiration. And that may just explain why “the greatest surprise of human evolution may be that the highest form of selfishness is selflessness.”
Alas, the church is definitely not immune from all this. The sexual scandals, fallen pastors, the materialist creed that manifests itself in the inordinate craving for the prosperity carrot, and the consummation of self at the highest level of leadership controlling thousands over the pulpit are not so much sins from the outside bombarding in, but they are decaying or rotting roots from the inside blooming or creeping out.
In the end, Jesus was correct when he said you cannot worship/serve two masters. You have to choose one: God or money. Judge Brandeis said something similar: “You can have democracy or great wealth in the hands of a few, but not both.”
It is thus either the revolutionary individual or the amazing grace. One is about sacrificing everything for one, the other is about sacrificing one to save all. Which holds the key to keep the society together, mm...you choose. Cheerz.
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