By Ang Yiying
FILIAL piety is still strong here - but in Singapore, more often than not, it means that children have hired maids to look after their elderly parents.
In an ongoing nationwide survey, seven in 10 individuals aged 75 and up said their children were the ones primarily looking after them, although, in many cases, this 'looking after' involved hiring a foreign domestic worker to do the job, or at least to take the edge off the stress of care-giving.
These insights, the preliminary results of a study organised by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports, were drawn from interviews with about 200 pairs of elderly folk and their respective main caregivers.
They were presented by National University of Singapore sociologist Angelique Chan, who heads the Tsao Foundation Ageing Research Initiative.
She spoke yesterday at a round-table discussion on caregivers for older adults, an issue increasingly aired, given that one in five people here will be age 65 or older by 2030.
A fuller report on care-giving in Singapore, based on the study's entire sample of 1,800 pairs of elderly folk and their caregivers or would-be caregivers, is expected in July.
many elderly parents may not have the good fortune of having maids too.