Take-up Rate of Enhanced Shared Parental Leave
Ministry of Social and Family DevelopmentSpeakers
Summary
This question concerns the take-up rate of the new Shared Parental Leave scheme introduced on 1 April 2025. Mr Ng Shi Xuan inquired about participation among fathers and government initiatives to encourage their active parenting roles. Minister of State for Social and Family Development Mr Goh Pei Ming stated that take-up data for the 2025 cohort will be available in mid-2027 following the completion of utilization and claim periods. He highlighted that the Ministry of Social and Family Development works with the Centre for Fathering on public outreach to promote shared responsibility. Furthermore, he mentioned that a work group chaired by Minister Indranee is reviewing workplace norms to facilitate a societal reset that better balances family and employment needs.
Transcript
80 Mr Ng Shi Xuan asked the Minister for Social and Family Development whether an update can be provided on the take-up rate of the new Shared Parental Leave since 1 April 2025.
The Minister of State for Social and Family Development (Mr Goh Pei Ming) (for the Minister for Social and Family Development): The take-up rate for the new Shared Parental Leave scheme is not yet available. The Shared Parental Leave scheme was introduced on 1 April 2025. Following their Maternity or Paternity Leave, parents have up to a year after their child's birth to utilise their Shared Parental Leave. Thereafter, their employers have an additional three months to submit their claims to the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF). MSF will be able to provide an update on the Shared Parental Leave take-up rate for the 2025 birth cohort in mid-2027.
Mr Speaker: Mr Ng.
Mr Ng Shi Xuan (Sembawang): I thank the Minister of State for his reply. But is there any inkling on what is the take-up rate among new fathers? And at the same time, are there any considerations that the Government can put in to encourage or to support new fathers in applying for Shared Parental Leave?
Mr Goh Pei Ming: Speaker, I thank the Member for his questions. As I said in my main reply, we do not really have the data in terms of the claims yet. It is still early days. In fact, on 1 April this year, we have just introduced the 10-week Shared Parental Leave. So, we do not really have the data to be able to speak definitively on that yet.
But having said so, I think the key message that we want to send through the Shared Parental Leave is that parenthood is a shared journey. It is a shared responsibility between both the father and the mother. More importantly, we do want to encourage fathers to take a more active role, in terms of taking care of not just the children in the first year, but beyond that, throughout our children's growth stage.
I think that is something that is very important. MSF continuously works with our partners, including partners such as the Centre for Fathering, to develop programmes and do public outreach to encourage our fathers to do more in terms of playing an active role in our children's development.
I also want to take the opportunity to say that beyond the Shared Parental Leave scheme, to encourage our fathers to do more, we do need to look beyond, perhaps at a societal reset in terms of how our workplace norms need to change, to balance more of family needs. I think these are some of the objectives that the work group chaired by Minister Indranee looking at marriage and parenthood will be looking at.