Asian values under fire
By Regan Morris/AP
Researcher Paul Ozawa has advice on how to curb crime among teenage girls in Singapore. Fathers should take more interest in their daughters, he said, and mothers should toughen up, quit crying and stop covering up for their daughters’ offenses.
Traditional Asian parenting styles may be to blame for a rise in fighting, stealing and smoking among Singaporean schoolgirls, according to officials, citing results of Ozawa’s study.
Ozawa, the director of psychological services at Singapore’s Subordinate Court, said the study was based on 155 girls who had committed crimes between 1998 and 1999. He said the majority of the girls had dads who neglected them and moms who spoiled them.
“The traditional Asian style of a harsh or absent father and a nurturing, though ineffective, mother was especially damaging,” the profile said.
Government leaders in Singapore have often extolled conservative, family-oriented “Asian values” while warning against the decadent practices of the West. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, Singaporean female offenders usually come from two-parent homes and are well-educated, Ozawa said.
Offending girls in Singapore rarely come from broken homes — but often their parents’ marriage is a formality, Ozawa said. He said many men have a “chicken rice stall in Batam” — a local expression meaning they keep a mistress or another wife on the nearby Indonesian island of Batam.
In 2000, about 35 percent of juveniles arrested in Singapore were girls, compared with 30 percent in 1999, Ozawa said. The four most common crimes committed by girls in the city-state were shoplifting, theft, unlawful assembly and rioting. In tightly controlled Singapore, rioting can mean “kicking dustbins and acting violent,” according to the official definition.
Over 70 percent of the girls in the study said they were driven to crime by greed, while 66 percent said peer pressure influenced them. The girls said shopping in Singapore’s hundreds of gleaming malls was their favorite social activity, followed by sports, visiting game arcades and going to the movies.
Ozawa said many of the offenders were materialistic and it’s “very likely that their parents are materialistic.” He also thinks kids in Singapore watch too much television.
“I think a lot of young people in Singapore are very bored,” Ozawa said. “You have a very significant group of young people who just sit around.”
He said mothers, who usually work full-time in Singapore, felt guilty seeing their daughters in court.
“They’re always crying. It really tugs at the heart strings because they’re pitiful,” he said. “But they’re terrible parents.” |
