Inventing a Moral Crisis: Women and Family

Abstract

The Singapore state viewed its citizens as suffering from a moral crisis. At the forefront of this perceived moral crisis were social issues such as the failure of graduate women in getting married, the single mother syndrome, Singapore women marrying Caucasians (known as the Pinkerton syndrome), decline in family values and a dilution of filial piety to elderly parents. Why did the state consider these social issues as moral ones and what explained its anxiety about the perceived moral collapse of the Singapore nation? A related issue here is the notion of public morality and its enforcement. The question here is whether these should be considered public moral issues and should the state be responsible for enforcing such morality? Alternatively, should moral issues be left to individuals and the family? This paper examined why the state felt that it has a duty to safeguard the moral character of its citizenry, particularly women, and nation; how it consciously transformed private morality into public morality; how it attempted to invent the crisis; and its actual enforcement of such morality in the quest for socio-political legitimacy. By implementing a series of strategies to cope with the perceived moral collapse, which to a great extent hinged on its women, the state was simultaneously attempting to create a common social ideology which was embedded in the Shared Values.