SC1101E Essay

How have history and social structure shaped my life?

"What's in a name?",posed by Shakespeare, is a question which remains especially relevant to me today, more than 400 years later. In this essay, I will be exploring how government policies, social pressures and global history have shaped my family structure as well as the person I am today.

 In coming to NUS as a freshman, countless introductions had to be made, and to leave a lasting impression, I often brought up the fact that I had a large family - 4 siblings, to be exact. To have this large of a family in Singapore is very uncommon, and to have a middle name is even more uncommon. I have a Japanese middle name, and when asked why, I usually tell people what my mother has been telling me since I was a child, that I was "made in Japan". This almost always leaves a shocked or surprised expression on faces. My name is a way of identifying myself, and having an uncommon name has greatly impacted my personality in that I tend to be viewed as eccentric by my peers. 

Growing up in Singapore as a schoolgirl, my mother loved all things Japanese, including the fashion and the culture. From a historical context, it is easy to see why Japanese culture had such a large impact on my mother, continuing to this day. After World War 2, the devastated Japanese economy began to improve following new interventionist economic policies implemented by the government in light of the Cold War. With the aid of the US, the Japanese experienced an extremely prosperous period, which led to the "Golden 60s". With the luxury of a growing economy, arts culture in Japan was able to be developed further. The demand for animated movies and television increased worldwide, leading to the globalization of Japanese culture through mediums such as anime and manga. Later, when I was born, still under the influence of the flow of culture from Japan to Singapore, my mother found a Japanese singer whom she came to admire, Noriko Sakai, and decided to name me after her. 

My first name, Jan, is not only derived from the month in which I was born, but was also influenced by the 4 siblings who came before me as their names also all start with "J". My mother had my eldest brother when she was 27 after she graduated from university. When asked about why she chose the name "John", she replied simply that "it sounded nice". In the year just before my brother was born, the Graduate Mothers Scheme was implemented. This campaign was the first of many responses to an earlier campaign about 10 years earlier known as the "stop at 2" campaign. Following the Japanese occupation, families in Singapore were reproducing at high rates due to the fact that products of the post-war baby boom were reaching adulthood. Following Chinese culture, another reason for the high reproductive rate was that couples persisted in trying to have boys rather than girls. In analysing this from a functionalist perspective, the fluctuation between the population planning efforts within such a short period of time-about 15 years- was likely a result of the government's inability to see or manage the functions associated with the "Stop at 2" policy. The government's manifest function was likely to temporarily slowly reduce the replacement rate of Singaporeans. However, the latent function of their first policy was that it almost irreversibly changed the mindsets and attitudes Singaporeans had towards conceiving and raising children in the long term. 

The "Have 3 or more (if you can afford it)" slogan was introduced in 1987, just a few years before my fourth sibling was born in 1991. In the span of 6 years, my mother had given birth to 4 children. When I asked my parents what prompted them to have children, my mother's response was that she wanted "to complete a family", reflecting that social ideals of a complete family at that time included children. My father's response was that he "felt that they had reached a point of [economic] stability to start a family". This reinforces the importance of economic factors on the creation of my own family structure. 

My mother did criticize the graduate mothers scheme's role in her decision, stating that "after the second child, no maternity leave was given". This highlights the fact that although the government outwardly encouraged couples to conceive, the thoroughness of the campaign was lacking, which may explain why to this day, Singapore remains an ageing population. However, considering that Singapore experienced an economic boom in this period, may explain why my parents ended up being exceptions to the rule at the time in deciding to have a large family. However, the term "deciding" may not fully accurately encapsulate their exact sentiment at the time. My father admitted, when I interviewed him for this essay, that after the 2nd child, the rest of us were not planned. Given that the age gap between my elder brother and I is 7 years, I could not say that I was surprised. While my parents were schooling, they were only taught the basic physiology of the male and female reproductive systems in biology class with no sex education program at all. The science and technology at the time also led my mother to believe that contraceptive methods such as IUDs and contraceptive pills were detrimental to a woman's health as they were highly invasive. Despite having the option to abort me, as my mother was 40 when she had me, my parents' morality did not allow them to do so. 

As a child of dual-income parents, my grandmother was the primary person who raised me. However, as she had 4 other children to cope with, and because the age gap between my siblings and I was large, I was forced to entertain myself as a child while they were in school. I believe that this isolation allowed me to become the imaginative and creative person I identify myself as today. My personality, existence and family relationships are the result of people's efforts to resolve issues( such as the government's population planning) and troubles (my parents' efforts to maintain a family). These efforts in and of themselves are similarly derived from historical repercussions and changing attitudes towards what is percieved to be the norm in society. Therefore, although my family and I are products of political, economic and socio-cultural forces, we are also formed by our personal choices. The decisions we make in relation to the effects of social forces which aim to steer us in one direction or another, shape us both as individuals and as a social unit. This stands a testament to the power of the human will, as well as our ability to change our futures in spite of, or along with the rest of society.  

(1,144 Words)

Here are sources for some of the information provided in the essay and timeline:

http://www.mas.gov.sg/News-and-Publications/Speeches-and-Monetary-Policy-Statements/Speeches/2015/An-Economic-History-of-Singapore.aspx

http://www.lehigh.edu/~rfw1/courses/1999/spring/ir163/Papers/pdf/mat5.pdf

http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-11807.html

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264552590_Sex_education_in_the_city_Singapore%27s_sexuality_education_curriculum

Attached below is my timeline