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Author: Cultivate SG
“Mom, Dad, Where Are You?” The Right to Know One’s Natural Parents
Adoptive children have a deep desire to seek their biological parents in an effort to find themselves. It touches on deep and profound questions, involving one’s identity and origin. This right to know one’s natural parents has been recognised as a legal and moral right in Singapore.
- 6 May 2025
“Mismatched: Dating and the Gender Divide”: A Cultivate Commune update
Do gender roles or differences matter in dating? What do men and women think? At our Commune on 8 March, we gathered some young men and women to talk candidly about the dating scene and their own experiences, and gained some interesting perspectives on the topic.
- 28 April 2025
Fatal Child Abuse of Megan Khung: Can we do better?
Every child abused is one child too many. In this process of soul-searching and learning to do better in our protection of children following the death of Megan Khung, it would help to reduce the level of blame levelled at the preschool and social service agency involved. Furthermore, we should also appreciate her grandmother’s dilemmas in her response, and the wider ecosystem surrounding the incident which involved drugs and family breakdown.
- 21 April 2025
“Porn: What’s the Harm?”: A Cultivate Commune update
Early exposure as teenagers, double lives, impaired relationships and bumpy healing journeys: these stories marked Cultivate’s first breakfast conversation this year, on a thoroughly un-breakfast topic – Pornography. Our conversation featured Jeffrey Pang, a counsellor who handles porn addiction cases, and Jakin Tan, a university undergraduate who overcame the addiction. It was moderated by Cultivate Chairperson, Ariel Lim, with her own story of breakthrough.
- 2 April 2025
Budget 2025 (Part 3 of 3): Systemic and Structural Changes to Help Large Families
In the last of our three-part series on the Large Families Scheme announced in Budget 2025, we look at how large families may be better supported in their journeys, in a more systemic and structural manner. Such changes include transport, COE, housing, tax reliefs and more
- 12 March 2025
Budget 2025 (Part 2 of 3): How Do Our Values Affect Fertility Rates?
In the second article of our three-part series on the Large Families Scheme announced in Budget 2025, we look at how our values shape attitudes towards fertility rates in today’s Singapore, including what some large families have taught us and the struggles they face.
- 3 March 2025
Budget 2025 (Part 1 of 3): From “Stop at Two” to Large Families Scheme
This is the first in a three-part series on the Large Families Scheme announced in Budget 2025. In this article, we take a quick trip through history, tracing Singapore’s family planning policies from the well-known “Stop At Two” campaign, to “Have Three or More, If You Can Afford It”, and finally to the Large Families Scheme announced recently.
- 25 February 2025
“Concerted Cultivation” on Steroids? How Singaporeans’ ‘kiasu’ parenting arises from our notions of success
In child-rearing styles, sociologist Annette Lareau observed that middle-class families engage in “concerted cultivation” to develop children through organised activities, while working-class and poor families use the “accomplishment of natural growth” where children are typically free to go out and play. As Singapore progressed from Third World to First, has our society adopted a “pressure-cooker” attitude towards child-raising?
- 11 February 2025
Online Sexual Harms: Why We Urgently Need More Protections
With our high digital connectivity, the lines between public and private life are often blurred or breached. This is especially serious in the context of online sexual harms, which disproportionately affect women, children and lower-income groups. More needs to be urgently done to combat online harms and protect the common good
- 20 January 2025
Unfiltered – The Whole Family Conversation 2024
Cultivate’s inaugural conference, “Unfiltered – The Whole Family Conversation”, took place on 14 November 2024 at the Grassroots Club. We featured three panels on topics related to family – marriage, children and intergenerational bonds – with speakers who shared their personal and professional insights. It sought to deepen conversations on unseen and upcoming issues on these fronts.
- 20 December 2024