Annual Number of Single Unwed Mothers

15 Mr Seah Kian Peng asked the Minister for Social and Family Development in the last five years, what has been the annual number of single unwed mothers.

The Minister of State for Social and Family Development (Ms Sun Xueling) (for the Minister for Social and Family Development): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, in the last five years, the annual number of single unwed citizen mothers, estimated by the annual number of out of wedlock births, has averaged around 830 per year.

The Government has extended to citizen children all benefits that support child growth, development and caregiving, regardless of the marital status of their mothers. These include the Child Development Account (CDA), subsidies for education, healthcare, childcare and infant care, and the foreign domestic worker levy concession.

Single unwed mothers who are in financial difficulty may also approach the Social Service Offices (SSOs) for financial assistance and also, be referred to Family Service Centres (FSCs) or other agencies for further support.

Mr Deputy Speaker: Mr Seah Kian Peng.

Mr Seah Kian Peng (Marine Parade): Sir, I thank the Minister of State Sun Xueling for her answer. I would like to ask a few supplementary questions. The 830 that was mentioned, which is the average number in the last five years, is she able to give the exact numbers in each of the last five years? What I am getting at is, is the number increasing or is the trend a decreasing one?

Second, regardless of the trend, 830 is still not a small number. And as we know, many of us have spoken in this House, myself included, for both mother and children, that given their circumstances, they are disadvantaged in many ways.

I do recognise the many new benefits that we have extended to mother and children. I would like to especially ask, in addition to those benefits, bearing in mind that they are one member short and, therefore, they have to do more as the challenges that they face are not small, are there gaps which the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF), perhaps leading on behalf of the whole-of-Government, could look at? Are there gaps which are not currently addressed?

One particular area I know is housing. While it may not be under MSF, it is an area of concern. I do know that yes, we do look at it on a case-by-case basis. But I wonder whether a policy could be made to address the needs of these single unwed mothers.

And beyond it, whether we could look at it from a whole-of-Government approach to deal with all challenges faced by this group of single unwed mothers and their children.

Ms Sun Xueling: I thank the Member for his comprehensive list of supplementary questions. I will start off with the numbers first. Based on the numbers I have, for single unwed mothers, between the years 2006 and 2012, the numbers have been above a thousand a year. The Member has specifically asked for the numbers in the past five years. I mentioned this because, actually, after 2012, starting from 2013, the average number of single unwed mothers per year has been less than a thousand per year. And, specifically, for the last five years that the Member has enquired about, in 2016, the number is 843; in 2017, 805; in 2018, 891; in 2019, 783; and in 2020, 859. So, we can see that from 2006 to 2020, it looks like the numbers on average have come down. But this is a number that we monitor closely because we do agree with the Member that we want to ensure that we give as much support as we can to single unwed mothers.

On his larger question about what we are doing, whole-of-Government, to support single unwed mothers, I would like to say that we hold a couple of principles. One I have mentioned in my main reply, which is that we have equalised the benefits for all citizen children. We have consistently been doing this in 2013, 2016, 2017, a whole range of updated measures to support citizen children. There are some specific Government policies that are specific to the encouragement of parenthood within marriage. So, there are a few that are separate from the equalisation of all child benefits which I mentioned earlier.

Coming back to the main point of the question, which is what is our whole-of-Government approach towards supporting single unwed mothers. I would like to mention a few points. Firstly, we know that we must tackle their basic needs and if there is any need from them for financial assistance, ComCare or Social Service Office; and for longer-term support, the Family Service Centres (FSCs) as well because they build a relationship with the single unweds and know best what they need; this is available to them.

Secondly, when it comes to caregiving, we have subsidies through KiFAS and also Childcare, Infant Care subsidies. We also have Student Care Financial Assistance schemes to help these moms.

We also know that job support is important to them. It is somewhat related to the earlier point I made about caregiving because if you build an ecosystem or support around their children, this frees up time for the mom to be able to look for a job. There are, of course, job training as well as support grants to help these mothers re-enter the workforce.

Next, we also have specific programmes such as KidSTART which targets children in rental housing. Some of them, they come from families where it is a single mom that is taking care of them. We have shared that we are scaling up the KidSTART programme.

Last but not least, sometimes our single unwed mothers also need counselling support and that is where the FSCs can come in.

The Member had mentioned specifically on housing. I cannot answer on the Ministry of National Development's (MND's) behalf. But from my last posting at MND, this was a topic that has been actively raised by Member Louis Ng before. MND has proactively removed impediments to single unweds when they try to apply for housing, for example, through the HDB online portal.

No single unwed mother will be turned away at the onset from applying for housing. HDB will assess whether or not the single unwed mother has family support, and in the instance where she does not have family support and she has a citizen child, then rest assured that HDB will ensure that she has housing options.

Mr Deputy Speaker: Mr Melvin Yong.

Mr Melvin Yong Yik Chye (Radin Mas): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the Minister of State for the answer. I think we can all agree: single unwed mothers do face a multitude of challenges, ranging from housing to caring for their children with limited resources.

My question focuses on the children of single unwed mothers. I would like to ask if the Ministry can consider embarking on a comprehensive study to examine whether the children from single unwed families do suffer disadvantages in their education and also, later in life, their job opportunities and their income; and to explore how we can better assist these children upstream to fulfil their best potential.

Ms Sun Xueling: I thank the Member for his supplementary question. I do not have the specific details of a research with me right now to address his question. But given the long-standing work we have been doing with single unwed mothers and our understanding of the experience that they and their children have, I am quite sure that MSF has quite ample data to understand the impact that children can undergo or be impacted with when they grow up in such family situations.