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Category: Social Harmony
“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
Cultivate Commune: Success and Flourishing in Singapore
Cultivate Commune is a breakfast conversation where we explore how big ideas are planted in real community experiences. In this fourth Commune on 31 August 2024, we heard from Associate Professor (Dr) Tan Seow Hon. Joined by two panellists Su Ching and Sin Cheng, they spoke on the topic of success and flourishing in Singapore.
- 18 December 2024
“Singapore Dream” Redux: Material Success, Flourishing or…?
For the longest time, the “Singapore Dream” has been about achieving material success through hard work, but attitudes are changing. In this “refreshed Singapore Dream”, is there room to focus more on human flourishing?
- 11 October 2024
On Social Media and Touching Grass
Social media has enabled us to connect with others like never before, but why are people feeling lonelier? Research shows that we all need social contact with other people to keep mentally fit, and to feel connected and appreciated.
- 31 July 2024
Cultivate Culture: How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies
Tear-jerking Thai film “How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies” invites us to reflect: Do we see our relationships in purely transactional terms, or do we genuinely love people – especially the elderly and sick – as persons worthy to be loved?
- 20 July 2024