Govt study on divorce’s impact on children not intended to guilt-trip divorcees: Sun Xueling
SINGAPORE — The intent of a government study on the impact of divorce on children was not to guilt-trip divorcees or establish “cause and effect”, Ms Sun Xueling said.
- Minister of State Sun Xueling said a study on divorces presented important observations that the Government felt should be shared
- MP Carrie Tan of Nee Soon GRC said the findings had the unintended effect of stigmatising and guilt-tripping divorcees
- Ms Sun said the study was not meant to establish causality
SINGAPORE — The intent of a government study on the impact of divorce on children was not to guilt-trip divorcees or establish “cause and effect”, Ms Sun Xueling said.
The Minister of State for Social and Family Development told Parliament on Tuesday (Jan 5) that the study was published because the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) thought the data gathered presented important observations that should be shared with social service practitioners and families.
She was answering a question from Ms Carrie Tan, Member of Parliament for Nee Soon Group Representation Constituency, who asked about the intentions of publishing the study.
The study released last month found that Singaporeans with divorced parents faced a long-term “divorce penalty” — they were less likely to obtain a university degree and more likely to earn less in their careers.
They also had lower balances in their Central Provident Fund savings accounts, were less likely to marry, and were more likely to get divorced if they were married than those whose parents remained married.
Ms Tan said that the study had further stigmatised divorcees and that the effect, though unintended, was to guilt-trip them.
She also said that the study could have led children from divorced families to be labelled negatively.
She asked whether MSF could improve their communication in future.
“I understand the spirit of data-sharing and observations. But the timing of this publication and the limited scope or insights it provided… unfortunately created a certain effect in divorcees. I went through a broken marriage before and I think I was quite saddened when I saw this,” she said.
Ms Tan also asked whether the study might make it harder for couples who are facing difficulties in their marriage and considering divorce.
After the publication of MSF’s study on Dec 8 last year, the Association of Women for Action and Research, a gender equality advocacy group, questioned its methodology and cautioned against the prospect of making divorces harder to obtain on the basis of its findings.
NO ATTEMPT TO DETERMINE CAUSALITY
The exchange between Ms Sun and Ms Tan came about after a parliamentary question tabled by Radin Mas MP Melvin Yong on MSF’s next steps in examining the impact of divorce on children and the effectiveness of interventions to reduce this.
Ms Sun said that the study did not seek to determine if divorce itself caused certain outcomes in children.
The findings showed that there were some children with divorced parents who had equal or even better outcomes than many children whose parents stayed married, she noted.
When pressed by Ms Tan, Ms Sun emphasised again that the study did not try to establish that divorce was the cause of children receiving less ideal outcomes than their peers whose parents stayed married.
“It is not cause and effect. We are not talking about causation. We are talking about co-occurence,” she said.
If the intention was to try to determine causality, the approach taken would have been very different from what was done, she added.
The experience of children from the time of their parents’ divorce would have to be tracked, specific factors isolated and observations made on how the children have developed over time.
Instead, the study was based on administrative data and looked at how children of divorced parents have performed at specific points in time.
MSF said earlier that children from divorced families were matched with those from intact families on a range of demographic characteristics, such as their gender, year of birth, parents’ ages and highest qualifications attained at the point of marriage. This was to ensure that the study compared families of similar profiles.
With the information, Ms Sun said that the ministry’s next step was to see how marriages may be strengthened and how divorce can be prevented.
Ms Sun acknowledged, though, that in some instances and for families with certain dynamics, divorce “may jolly well be the best way out for everyone”.
“If that is the case, and if there are young, minor children involved, how best do we mitigate the impact of divorces on these children? That is the intent and the spirit of this study,” Ms Sun said.
Ms Tan then asked whether further studies were afoot to look into the various factors contributing to the outcomes faced by Singaporeans with divorced parents.
Ms Sun replied that a longitudinal study would require a lot of resources and the ministry’s focus was on strengthening marriages and facilitating the process for couples who are contemplating divorce.