Volunteer group wants 19-year-olds to think about starting families

SINGAPORE – A volunteer parenthood group wants to get people from as young as 19 years old to start thinking of having children. To do this, the group called I Love Children, is planning games such as Escape Room Adventures with parenthood messages.

It wants the youths to think about fertility, finances and lifestyles that would affect their decision to start a family.

The group used to focus on young adults above 21 years old, but it found in recent years, through interactions with the young adults, that younger Singaporeans do not know that there are higher risks in late pregnancies.

They also found that not many young adults want to have children by age 30.

The plans were announced at the group’s 10th anniversary today (Oct 24).

Said president of the group Joni Ong: “19 years old seems like a good age because at 19 years, they’re mature enough to think about love, think about dating, about courtship, about future marriages, so we are going into tertiary institutions.

“In fact, we’ve started having dialogue sessions in tertiary institutions and we are having really good focus group discussions and sharing with them that the definition of success should include starting a family. Of course, that should be preceded by marriage.” CHANNEL NEWSASIA