FUTURE CARE

Do we have what it takes to look after older S’poreans?

- Jessica Novia

The narrative of growing old in Singapore goes something like this: marrying and having children who will then take care of you when you can no longer take care of yourself.

If and when that is not possible, they will check you into a nursing home or hospice where you will stay until you die.

This "traditional" approach to eldercare in Singapore is called "ageing in place". This philosophy emphasises enabling seniors to remain in their own homes and communities as they age, and delaying moving them into institutional care facilities for as long as possible.

The realities of modern life, however, are testing the limits of this model. Professor Paulin Tay Straughan has been sounding the alarm bells for years.

"We've valorised the importance of family, and sometimes we forget to do a pulse check. Are families really taking care of their aged members?" asks the director of the Centre for Research on Successful Ageing. She was also the principal investigator of a project on Successful Ageing in Singapore, Seoul and Shanghai.

The utopia of intergenerational transfer of assistance and adult children taking care of their ageing parents hinges on a specific type of family construct, she says. A single breadwinner along with a full-time housewife who can then dedicate time to become a full-time caregiver to ageing parents.

But that is no longer the predominant type of family in Singapore. In the last population census conducted in 2020, dual-career couples (with both husband and wife employed) constituted the largest group among married couples, with the proportion increasing from 47.1 per cent in 2010 to 52.5 per cent in 2020. "Who is going to do the caregiving? Who has the time and energy?" asks Prof Straughan.