The moment I thought about writing on the topic of the Malay-Muslim underclass issue after reading this article by Zul Othman in TODAYonline, I knew that I’m going to have to walk the tightrope really carefully. Some people might not take kindly to someone of an ethnic group commenting on the problems of another. So, before I continue, I would like to clarify that what follows are comments based on the standpoint of an outsider, and if my observations are wrong, I am more than happy to stand corrected.

In his article, Zul Othman notes the many problems of the Malay-Muslim underclass, such as “the high number of Malay-Muslims in drug rehabilitation centres and prisons, or rampant youth delinquency, promiscuity and teen pregnancies.” A social worker who was interviewed for the article said despite their best efforts, there are just too many families to help and too few resources available to help everyone.

I guess the problem is pretty much overwhelming, but I do think the situation is going to get worse in the future, unless something can be done about the size of the families of the Malay-Muslim underclass. It is my personal observation that, relative to other Singaporean ethnic groups, Malay families tend to be much bigger, and it is going to be much more difficult to give necessary parental guidance to a large number of children, especially for the poorer families where the parents probably have to spend most of their time working to make ends meet in the family.

I’ve talked to Malay-Muslim friends about the relatively large size of their families, and hearing their explanation, I appreciate why Malay-Muslims value large families. However, from a pragmatic outsider standpoint, it seems to me that having many kids is likely to result in insufficient parental supervision, and that is a probable reason as to why the Malay-Muslim community is currently experiencing such issues.

I personally see no reason why the Malays should lag other ethnic groups in areas such as education. I think the biggest problem really is that resources within the Malay-Muslim underclass family have been stretched too thin, thus hindering the development of the children in these families to their fullest potential. A generation ago, the Chinese folks had pretty large families too, but it appears there was a paradigm shift (largely helped by the stop at two policy) and Chinese families tend to be very much smaller nowadays, so each child gets more resources to develop his/her potential.

If there is one thing that must be done now, it is to encourage the Malay-Muslim underclass to have a more manageable family size. All things being equal, a smaller number of kids will mean that each child will get more resources and attention, which may reduce the number of delinquent youths. In fact, it’s not just the Malay-Muslim underclass that should keep family size manageable; everyone who’s intending to start families should give some thought about what’s a manageable family size.

And personally, I think three kids, plus minus one, is a nice number. :)