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More ‘I dos’, fewer ‘I don’ts’ in 2012

SINGAPORE — The number of people who got hitched reached a high last year, while divorces dropped to a four-year low, according to the latest report published by the Department of Statistics yesterday.

SINGAPORE — The number of people who got hitched reached a high last year, while divorces dropped to a four-year low, according to the latest report published by the Department of Statistics yesterday.

A total of 27,936 people married last year — about 2.5 per cent higher than in 2011, while divorces fell to 7,241.

Nevertheless, the report noted the increasing proportion of people aged 45 and above among divorcees over the last decade. In 2002, this group made up 26 per cent for male divorcees. Last year, it reached 39 per cent. For female divorcees, the proportion increased from 17 per cent to 25 per cent over the same period.

Among other trends were people marrying late — the median age last year for grooms and brides were 30.1 years and 28 years respectively — and rising proportion of inter-ethnic marriages, which formed 21 per cent of total marriages last year, compared to 12 per cent in 2002. The latter is an indication of successful integration efforts, experts said.

Sociologists whom TODAY spoke to attributed the high number of marriages last year to a better-than-expected economic outlook, as well as efforts by the Government and civil groups to promote marriage. Nevertheless, marriage counsellors noted that the figures do not reflect the actual quality of existing marriages.

The experts said the drop in number of divorces — against a backdrop of high global divorce rates — was due to more people attending pre-marriage courses and, as a positive side effect of people marrying later, greater maturity of couples.

National University of Singapore sociologist Paulin Straughan noted that a global recession did not materialise between 2011 and last year.

“That always helps in making long-term investment plans like getting married. Also, our Government is one of the most obsessed in promoting marriage. Because we are small, they can be a lot more pro-active in promoting certain ideologies,” she said, noting the formation of groups such as the National Family Council and Dads For Life. “We did not allow singlehood to be normalised,” she added.

Describing the increased number of marriages and drop in divorces as “very encouraging”, Mr Lim Soon Hock, Chairman of the National Family Council, noted the “intensive public education” and the involvement of other stakeholders such as family service centres, which run courses to promote marriage. He added that pre-marriage courses enabled couples to be better prepared in tackling potential problems such as financial matters, managing time when they have children, as well as in-laws issues.

However, All In The Family Counselling marriage counsellor Tammy Fontana pointed out that the figures “do not tell you if these are happy marriages”. She noted the family and societal pressure in Singapore to get married but people were still having “unrealistic expectations in marriage”.

“Then what happens at the age of 45? They have completed all these goals in life but yet, they are not happy, then they decide to seek a different path,” she said.

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