Married couples in Singapore are too tired to have sex, according to a survey published Sunday in the city-state which is facing a chronic shortage of babies.
The survey of 200 married couples carried out by the Sunday Times showed more than three in five couples have sex once a week or less and 75 percent of them cited tiredness as the reason.
"I have no time to have sex, let alone the commitment to bring up a child," film producer Chan Pui Yin who is married to a businessman was quoted as saying in the newspaper.
Sociologists were not surprised by the results which they said were a reflection of the emphasis on career and social status by Singaporeans.
"The definition of success has changed," said marriage psychologist Dr. Frederick Toke.
"It's measured not by your family, but by your career and your good social status," he said.
Tan Thuan Seng, president of the Christian group Focus on the Family Singapore, echoed similar sentiments.
"People are more selfish now, because of the focus on individual freedom and pleasure," Tan said.
A majority of the couples polled placed love as their number one priority, followed by financial security, children and then sex.
Christine Goh, who placed financial security as her first priority, said she would not be having any children.
"I don't want kids," Goh said.
"To me, they're parasites. They're like mushrooms growing on trees, feeding on the host," she said.
Singapore's low birth rate has become an urgent concern after the fertility rate hit an all-time low of 1.25 children per woman in 2003 with only 35,000 babies born in that year.
The Southeast Asian city-state needs at least 50,000 babies to be born each year, or a fertility rate of 1.8, just to naturally replace its population of 3.4 million. Experts say 2.1 births per woman is the ideal rate for constant renewal.
Fixing the city-state's baby shortage woes has become a national priority with the government dishing out a new S$300 million Singapore annual package of cash and other incentives to encourage couples to have more children.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the