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Category: Marriage, Family And Children
Unfiltered – The Family on Trial 2025: “Singapore Awakened: How Success and the Alternative of Flourishing Shape Family”, Keynote Address by Assoc. Prof. (Dr.) Tan Seow Hon
Assoc. Prof. (Dr.) Tan Seow Hon delivered the keynote address at Cultivate SG's second annual conference, "Unfiltered - The Family on Trial", on 17 November 2025. In her speech titled "Singapore Awakened: How Success - and the Alternative of Flourishing - Shape Family", Dr Tan reflects on the "Singapore Dream", the narrow mindset of success in contrast with the concept of flourishing, and how these impact marriage and family. She concludes by offering some thoughts on how to move from success to flourishing.
- 5 December 2025
Unfiltered – The Family on Trial 2025
Cultivate SG's second annual conference, "Unfiltered - The Family on Trial" took place on 17 November 2025. Held at the Lifelong Learning Institute, the conference drew together expert voices, research, and real-life stories. The central theme was to redefine notions of “success” in Singapore, and how these challenge and reshape the Singaporean family.
- 4 December 2025
Why Family Matters to Every Individual, and to Society
“[Family] is a social institution… When that is broken, everyone suffers.” Cultivate SG executive director Darius Lee spoke at the Men's FoRM II Conference on 1 November 2025, on the "State of the Family". Here is an edited extract from the speech at the conference, about why family matters to individuals and society.
- 4 November 2025
“Cinderella Effect”: Is risk of abuse higher in stepfamilies?
Drawing its name from the popular fairy tale, the “Cinderella effect” describes the tragic phenomenon where children have a higher risk of abuse by non-biological parents (married or unmarried to the biological parent). Though well-documented, the reasons for the trend are hotly debated. Nevertheless, understanding the unique and specific challenges and complexities faced by stepfamilies can guide us in preventing and addressing child abuse.
- 28 July 2025
Becoming Mum: A Cultivate Commune (May) update
Becoming a mother can be a very challenging experience for some. At our Commune on 10 May, Jennifer Heng shared her story about how she came to start Safe Place, an organisation helps unsupported pregnant women and their families.
- 14 July 2025
Double-edged Sword? Do grandparents help build strong families?
A study by Catholic Family Life found that strong families are undergirded by strong marriages. Four factors are key: family commitment, conflict resolution, marital satisfaction and family spirituality. But grandparents and intergenerational relationships could be a "double-edged sword" if values and attitudes are not aligned.
- 12 June 2025
“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
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
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