The Skeptical Optimist

Recently there have been a spate of reports of horrific child abuse cases and I have to admit that I can hardly bring myself to read some of them. There was one that was closer to home about a man caning his stepson over 100 times in 2 hours and then there was truly frightening case of Baby P, a toddler who was abused for much of his short life and died of the most gruesome injuries. That case really disturbed me because my son Dante is basically the same age as Baby P and I flinch even when he as much as bumps his head… so I can’t even begin to conceive what it means to treat a vulnerable infant like that as a “punching bag”. I can’t even begin to understand what goes on in the minds of these parents, or the adults that were entrusted with his care.

This isn’t to say that ordinary parenthood is always plain sailing. I have 2 boys who are about 23 months apart and they can be very jealous of each other, to the point where I feel like I’m a referee at a particularly vicious football match. My 3 year old has had his fair share of terrible twos and threes as well - so I know all too well the anger and frustration that most parents have with their strong-willed preschoolers. A few times a month I catch myself on the brink of saying something that I would regret or spanking him out of anger and not with a motive to instructively punish. Which parent hasn’t felt this way? Especially after repeated defiance or disregard of the rules? In the words of super-nanny - I think we all need a time-out.

I love my children very much, but I have to say I’m finding out that parenting is a long and hard road. Most people are scared of the responsibilities and inconveniences of being pregnant and having a baby - but let me tell you, the French have got it right when they say, “Petits enfants petits problemes, grands enfant, grands problemes” (small children, small problems, big children, big problems). Watching and helping your children achieve more independence, grow up emotionally and physically are beautiful but punishing experiences. Each stage in a child’s life sees him or her having some pretty complex needs and there is no real rule book to help you deal with it. Every child is unique and special.

I don’t mean to scare anyone off, but I think that if you’re going to have a child you need to know what you’re in for. Sometimes I think one reason why child abuse happens in the first place is because these parents weren’t ready for the commitment, responsibility and challenge of raising a child. It’s one thing to bring a life into this world, it’s another thing to help nurture it into a kind, caring, thoughtful human being. Along the way though, you’ll find that it’s not just the child that’s growing - but you as well - and in ways you never imagined were possible.

Tags: child abuse, parenting, strong willed children

This is my younger son, Dante - aged almost 17 months. I think the gene pool acquitted itself quite well here….:) He has just started talking and one of his favourite and complete phrases is “I want milk!” - this is usually preceded by pulling you to the kitchen and pointing vigorously at the fridge. I nursed him until he was about 10 months old and then weaned him gradually off to formula (I found that goat’s milk went down best) and then to full cream cow’s milk.

I have to admit that I’m one of those compulsive parents who read ingredient labels like a fiend and try as far as possible to feed my children balanced, natural and where affordable, organic diets. It’s not easy, but we try our best. So I can completely imagine the anguish of those parents in China and their anger at the unscrupulous (can I use the word evil?) companies who used an industrial grade toxin to boost protein levels in diluted milk. Frankly, it’s really incredible that this could happen in the first place. For one, the people responsible for doing this must have some basic grasp of science, so by default they would know the consequences of their actions. It boggles the mind.

But it also highlights a greater problem in our increasingly globalised and complex food supply chain. It’s already fairly challenging to screen out suspect products and produce from countries like China but what of raw materials in processed food? There is just no way to make sure that chocolate bar that’s made in Australia didn’t get its milk from China. In my household, I’d stopped buying vegetables and fruit from China for a few years now, but even then, I can’t escape the fact that everytime I eat out in my favourite coffeeshop or hawker centre, that stewed cabbage I love or the kailan stirfry that I dutifully order are probably, inevitably from China.

Of course, most Singaporeans say that they trust the AVA here and that proper checks are in place. I don’t doubt that the regulatory agency is doing its job, and I’ve personally met some of the people there and I know they are very serious about what they do. But the truth is, tests are not foolproof for the simple fact that there are some things that most agencies would never think of testing for. In this latest case of melamine tainted foodstuff - the regulatory agency in China admitted that the idea of finding melamine in milk was so unlikely that they just didn’t test for it as a contaminant. That’s like trying to test flour for cement - you wouldn’t think it was there in the first place…

Most of all though, I worry for my children - their little bodies harbour greater concentrations of toxins and their organs are less able to cope with filtering out the bad stuff. What do you do as a mother, when they lookat you with trusting innocence and happily slurp up whatever is put in front of them on the table? As I wrote before, I try to buy organic most of the time and I avoid most processed foods - but this whole scandal has really left me with a bad taste in the mouth. How much trust should we give food labeling? When is 100% fresh cow’s milk not 100%?

Tags: china food scandal, food safety

I remember how horrified I was personally when the United States re-elected George W Bush after what was in my opinion 4 years of incompetence. In the run up to the election, I thought there was no way this guy who had dodged the draft, lied about weapons of mass destruction, given tax breaks to the very rich (etc) could beat the Vietnam war decorated veteran, intellectually minded and stentorian looking John Kerry… of course I was wrong.

Let me be frank about my liberal bias here: I read the New York Times daily and subscribe to the New Yorker and it doesn’t help that I spent my formative college years in a fairly left leaning campus where Republicans were treated at best as oddities and at worst as crazed pariahs. Till now, every time I meet an out and out Republican who seems like a really nice reasonable person, I can’t help but wonder - how did you elect the guy who with one decision is responsible for so many American military deaths, maimed veterans, billions in US taxpayers money lost to corrupt war contracts and I’m not even going into the biggest tragedy of all: the unthinkable number of Iraqi civilian deaths and the equally unimaginable trauma that this 5 year conflict has brought to the Iraqis. But I digress. I’m sure everyone has their reasons, they’re just not transparent or readily understandable to me.

What I wanted to write about was the new frenzy around the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Apparently, “white women” (talk about the racist undertones here) are rushing in droves to support her, so much so that Barack Obama is down in the national polls.

Let’s look a little closer at her appeal here: she’s got that frontier, never say die mentality of the Alaskan moose hunter, plus she has 5 children, including a Down syndrome baby whose condition she knew of prenatally and a pregnant teenager who at age 17 is going to marry the father of the baby. I can see her appeal to conservatives: her steadfast pro-life stance and her insistence that evolution may not be the right thing to teach little children in schools. I respect opinions of this group of people, in so far that, this is consistent with their world view and they are voting as such, fair enough.

But for the rest of the womenfolk in the US, and let’s face it, McCain did not nominate Sarah Palin for her foreign policy or even national policy experience or for her ability to be a worthy commander-in-chief (being photographed in military uniform with the troops doesn’t count) if he has a bad biopsy. He nominated her to peel of some Hillary Clinton supporters who were on the fence about Barack Obama and to invigorate the Republican conservative base.

So that’s what makes all this talk about feminist power and identity politics stink. So ok, she’s a working mother - but as one astute American mother pointed out : there are quite a few jobs where you can successful “juggle a blackberry and a breast-pump” (and I would add a pregnant teenager and 3 other kids) but Vice-President is not one of them. I don’t care what sexist labels you throw on me, they don’t work. I am the working mother of 2 young babies and let me tell you, I’m not vice-president and it is not at all easy. Multiply the responsibilities and consequence of my work a thousandfold and you get Sarah Palin and it’s looking pretty scary. This is a woman who preaches abstinence, but not quite successfully to her daughter, and someone who took a plane trip to give a speech in spite of the fact that her amniotic fluid was leaking. She also knew that her teenage daughter was knocked up and decided to accept the presidential nomination in spite of the fact that Bristol would be exposed to relentless critique from the media. What kind of mother does that?

These are not sexist comments at all. While McCain campers might cry: you wouldn’t ask this of a man! Let’s see- how many men running for national office have more than 2 kids, any under 1 year and can even get pregnant while on the job? This is not about gender at all, this is about who is the more competent for the job and who is able to focus completely on the task at hand.

I find it frightening that some Americans want “an average, normal working mother/family” to be one step away from the White House. We want our leaders to be the best of us, not the mediocre. We want them to have gone to the best universities or have a long experience in national and foreign policy. Just because a politician can relate and empathise with the ordinary man, doesn’t mean that his political leadership will be the best for the middle class or the blue collar worker: just look at those segments under the Bush administration.

So it’s disingenuous when Palin talks about 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling and and insult to Hillary. If Palin shows up her inexperience, her potentially dishonest portrayal of her time as Alaskan governor and generally dumbs down the debate on foreign and national policy by launching meaningless attacks on her opponents, then I would argue that glass ceiling is going to be much thicker than it was when we started in this American election season. And in the end, this ceiling is just in our minds, we should be electing people based on ability, vision and honesty not race, gender and political affiliation.

Tags: palin, politics, republicans, working mothers

In Singapore, when I tell most people that I’m 28 this year and have not one, but two young children, I’m usually greeted with gasps of surprise and disbelief. I know I buck the demographic trend here; most of my peers are either single or of late, married without children, with no plans to have any soon.

There are many reasons for this, especially from the women’s point of view. It just isn’t really possible in most cases to juggle work and childbearing and rearing without paying the price for it - either in time for yourself, your spouse or your ambitions. In my opinion, the government’s recent fairly generous reform of maternity benefits, childcare leave and tax rebates to encourage couples and especially working women to have children or have more children can only work in a limited way. What really needs to be addressed is work-life balance and how women pregnant or with children are treated at the workplace, in public and in private. Recent letters and articles in the papers like “Battering Ram or Stroller” really leave me wondering whether Singapore as a country is ready for a baby boom. After all, it takes a village to raise a child.

Sometimes when I read online or print responses of people who are unwilling to accord pregnant women at the workplace with benefits or feel that they should be penalised for taking time off work, I know for sure that they don’t know what it’s like to have a newborn, toddler, young child or even a teenager. No one, even parents themselves, can really tell you how hard the first few days. months and years are of bringing up a young child. No one can really describe not getting more than 2 hours of sleep at stretch for 3 months or how post-partum body chemistry is so volatile. No one tells you just how this new human being is completely dependant on you for everything, so much so that even if you forget just once to clip a fingernail or wipe a skinfold there will invariably be a scratched cheek or an unexplained rash. And no one can really convey what it’s like to have a child sick, wan, limp with a high temperature; or even the trauma of watching your careful doctor insert a needle that looks almost larger than a newborn’s vein into the tiny hand of your baby. Having children is a decision yes, but also a sacrifice, a challenge and an effort that definitely needs more than one pair of hands, or even two pairs of hands.

My own experience? Having two is more than enough for me at this stage in my life - maybe even for good. I’ve started giving away maternity clothes and baby wear to my friends and colleagues who are embarking on the brave new journey that is parenthood. I’m glad I made the decision to have my kids early; there are some things that I’ve definitely given up, like more of a nightlife or disposable income to do what I please with. But these are nothing compared to the pillowy cheeks and rascal grin of my 15 month old and the made-up songs of my 3 year old, sung at the top of his voice early in the morning. And they’re definitely nothing compared to the hug, kiss ritual at bedtime or the little voice calling out after me “Night Mummy, Love you Mummy”.

So why don’t I want anymore? I want to spend time with each of them individually, I don’t want to get a maid, and I want to get to know these little human beings that I made properly. The reality of the situation is, we have to be a two income family and I’m not sure that I’m cut out to be a stay home mother. Throwing more money at the situation won’t solve any problems, even giving more leave - which is the better of the two ideas. But really, what needs to change are the attitudes of the people around us, our colleagues, strangers on public transport and queues. In our get ahead or get left behind city, we need to stop feeling resentment for people who get different treatment for having children.

Tags: babies, children, government policy

It’s 2 days to National Day and my elder son Luca has been asked to lead the pledge taking ceremony for his daycare’s national day celebrations. They were looking for a multi-racial contingent and my son was chosen because he fits into the category of “others”.

My children are half Italian and half Singaporean and from the time we had to fill in their details on the birth certificate forms till now, we’ve been struggling with how they fit into these unwieldly categories. Technically they aren’t Eurasian because their dad isn’t, so for now they are just in the hold all category of “others”. Then there’s the matter of ethnic costumes… every time Racial Harmony Day rolls around, we always get requests to dress Luca in a national costume. My husband makes a funny face and wrinkles his brow, but no good Sicilian national costume comes to mind, so one year he went in a Thai outfit, and this year we are debating between a Punjabi suit and an Italian soccer jersey….after all, they didn’t really specify whose national costume.

But I have to say, when we think about the list of countries we could see bringing up the kids in, Singapore always ranks pretty much near the top. It’s hard to find a country that accepts biracial or multiracial kids with no questions asked, with hardly a second look. Perhaps it’s because we are ultimately a nation of migrants, travellers, post-colonials, expats and converted heartlanders. I say converted heartlander thinking of my husband who has learnt how to negotiate the public transport system, knows the difference between a five room improved and five room advanced flat and enjoys durian and claypot rice. Most of all though, he’s started to see this as a second home - coming back from Italy the other day he mused that he was strangely happy to see Changi airport.

It’s different in Italy where a lot of emphasis is placed on a homogeneous Italian culture and race. There, foreigners are still often viewed with apprehension and skepticism. I remember the first time I went to the smallish town where my in-laws stay and how I nearly caused a little boy to fall off his bicycle because he had never seen a Chinese woman before. I think some of the people we encounter in the supermarket still think I’m the domestic help! And while mixed marriages like ours are on the rise, they aren’t viewed with the same acceptance as they are here.

Of course, it hasn’t always been a bed of roses - we’ve had our lot of bureaucratic problems and people who think all women who marry foreigners are sarong party girls! But by and large, most of the people I meet are happy for us and for our children, that they get to have unique views and insights to two cultures. For show and tell at Luca’s daycare recently, we sang some Italian songs to Luca’s class and it was great to share something different.

I produced an interview with overseas Singaporean author Wena Poon the other day on Primetime Morning and a term she used really struck me. She talked about “larger Singapore”, about enlarging the physical borders of Singapore to include those Singaporeans who have made their lives overseas. For me, I would include the Singaporeans who have chosen to enlarge our perceptions of country and belonging even from within our borders. Whatever happens, I’m sure that my sons will always be able to call this island home.

Tags: family life, identity, italian, others, singaporean

Kermit was right - it’s not easy being green. And before you think I mean that in some flippant way, let me assure you that I’m dead serious about it. When I first met my husband in the States, he was vegan and as an omnivorous Chinese woman in her early 20s, I thought he was quirky, slightly mad and definitely a little bit too committed to the cause. Some 7 to 8 years later, he’s now living in Singapore with me and he’s a less than reluctant omnivore. Definitely, it’s my fault - from the ricotta cheese and gelato in Italy to the scallop in New Orleans - he says watching me eat was just too much! Plus my mother-in-law is an amazing cook, and my father-in-law likes to barbecue! mmmm… sausages!

But recently, I’ve been giving some serious thought to becoming at least part time vegetarian (yes, that term exists!) and maybe even extending this to my boys… This is really difficult, because it’s one thing become vegetarian yourself but it’s another thing figuring out how to give two energetic growing toddlers enough protein, calcium and nutrients.

Plus, I really do love meat! I’m not a bleeding heart vegetarian, I believe in the circle of life philosophy - but with responsibility and humanity. So that means that while I don’t think it’s unethical to kill a cow, fish, chicken, pig, etc to eat it (although I respect the beliefs of the ethical or religious vegetarians)- I do believe that it’s completely unethical to industrially farm these animals and subject them to cruel and unusual forms of housing and death. Industrially raised pigs, cattle and poultry live in abysmal conditions, often overcrowded, overfed and injected with antibiotics to prevent diseases that are a result from these conditions.

Sticking to this view, it makes it really hard to eat meat unless it’s free range and organic, something that’s almost non-existent in Singapore unless it’s for a very high price, which basically makes it untenable. Honestly, I can’t afford to pay $60 for a piece of grass fed steak and shouldn’t have to. Which makes the alternative? Well, going green in the most fundamental sense.

To add to that, there’s the environmental imperative. Recently I interviewed a Geography professor who had done extensive research into lifestock and he confirmed my suspicion that one of the easiest ways for you to reduce your carbon footprint is not just to ditch that fuel guzzler of a car, switch off the lights and airconditioning unit and use less plastic - it’s actually to eat less meat. Cattle produce the most greenhouse gases! More than cars apparently… and that’s not taking into account their waste which pollutes waterways. Plus, they actually use up arable land that could be used to grow grain and vegetables to feed parts of the world populations that isn’t getting enough food. It’s quite a serious situation.

But how to run on this campaign in a food loving, food crazy country? No one is going to be able to tell you not to eat that plate of ba chor mee, black angus steak, panfried foie gras, pork knuckle or ba kwa. Not to mention mutton soup, ayam penyet and beef rendang. There would be riots! And don’t think that bento box of sushi is immune too, research shows overfishing could lead to a total depletion of oceanic fish in twenty years or so. So it’s quite a conundrum and really sometimes thinking like this can make your head swim, because how are one person or one family’s choices going to make a difference in a situation that seems like it’s headed to the dogs anyway? A more appropriate response might be: eat all the foie gras that you can right now because it’s all going to pot anyway, and you might not be able to afford it 10 years from now!

Right.

So in my household we are making simple decisions - red meat once a month, chicken once a week, farm raised fish or seafood twice a week and vegetarian pasta dishes or stews and stirfries with rice the rest of the time with added protein from cheese (not completely innocent I know, but hey my kids are under 5 and their bones are growing), eggs, tofu, lentils, beans and chickpeas.

It’s not an ideal situation, but it’s working for me. Although when we eat out at the hawker centre we do eat the normal wanton mee and chicken rice.

Still I’ve discovered old dishes that I used to cook to impress my once vegan husband, drawing out of the veggie cookbooks I bought for romance. It’s an uphill struggle, I’ll admit, I’m a sausage-bacon-lobster-foie gras-steak-otoro sushi-hamburger kind of girl… but hey, it’s not just the health of the planet and the humane treatment of animals - it’s after all also our health as well. Still, I have to admit, once a month we’ll go on a date without the kids and just have a steak or hamburger or plate of wonderfully expensive sashimi. After all, you only live once! What do you think?

Tags: feeding children, good food, omnivorism, vegetarianism

I am a late comer to this driving thing. I still have a lovely neon yellow and orange probation plate, warning off drivers on my front and back windscreens. It’s not that I’m a terrible newbie driver; I still signal at every lane change and turn, and check and recheck my blindspots… Still there are some things that I don’t do very well! Like gauge how much to reverse when I’m parking - hence the pretty dent on the back of my second-hand honda!

I bought my first ever car about 3 months ago and frankly I can’t quite imagine life without it anymore. I used to be a pretty hardcore non car person, even when I was studying in the United States I actually trekked back and forth to the supermarket with a hiking backpack (yes, I was young, foolish and quite fit!) Even with a kid in tow, no maid and 6-7 months pregnant I still used to take public transport and only cab it when I had a lot of groceries. Many of my friends thought I was quite mad, but I just calculated how it was totally not worth it to get a car in Singapore, what with the ERP, road tax, COE, parking, fuel prices, etc… Things obviously changed when I had my second son - there was no way I could handle both toddler and newborn by myself in a taxi, not to mention groceries or shopping. So my husband and I got our licenses and a modest, fuel-efficient honda jazz, crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.

It’s definitely more expensive yes, but there are all these intangibles that you can’t put a value on: like not waiting for public transport with a pram and crochety children, not having to be put on hold calling for a cab, not having to deal with erratic taxi drivers or those people on trains and buses who pretend to be sound asleep even when you’re 8 months pregnant with a toddler and pram and obviously need a seat on the bus/train.

I wonder whether it’s just a function of being in Singapore - when we were holidaying in Amsterdam (pregnant, with toddler and pram) - we never had a problem getting onto trams and people were always lining up to give up their seats to us. Some trams even had designated pram/bicycle bays. It’s even simple gestures, like in Tokyo when you say “Excuse me” because it’s your stop and an already packed train squeezes itself even more to open a path for you to get off the train, and the people getting on at that stop do not try to trample over you in their bid to get on the train first!

So definitely it’s a combination of infrastructural and etiquette-based factors that make a car a logical option for those who can afford it. But coming back to the question of cost - with the recent ERP hikes the debate comes back again… Is electronic road pricing a good way to control congestion or does it just unfairly penalise people who have cars who have no alternate routes to go to work or back home? Are there more efficient ways of ensuring good traffic flow like staggered working times or tele-commuting? Or even making public transport more efficient, cost-effective and comfortable and then incentivising people to take it (like with more seasonal passes) instead of just taxing car owners - some of whom may actually own cars out of necessity and not luxury.

I understand that we are a small island, and that we have to control the population of cars on the island for the sake of minimise pollution and congestion - but really - has enough been done to ensure a comfortable public transportation system that is time and cost-efficient for the commuter and not just for the service-providers? And perhaps for the disabled, pregnant and elderly - special seats could be set aside and labeled as such - quite like lots for the disabled that are now left empty on instinct by able bodied drivers. We don’t have to legislate all kinds of bad behaviour away, but surely this could be somehow enforced…

Tags: driving, ERP hikes, public transport

Tags: children, death, memory, mothers