Jan 15 2009
Safe Sex Ed For Maids
Recently, a Canadian woman, Juanita Stead, mistook her stomach pains for kidney stones and was rushed to hospital only to give birth to a full-term baby. Ms Stead claimed that she did not suffer morning sickness and continued to menstruate and so she had no idea she was pregnant.
I encountered a similar claim when I interviewed a maid who gave birth in Singapore. The routine pregnancy test she took in October turned out negative, but on 11 Dec, Nina gave birth to a baby boy she had been carrying for 27 weeks. (“The Test That Failed” Today Dec 23 )
When I asked her how she got pregnant, Nina was too dumbstruck to answer, she kept saying “I don’t know, I don’t know how.” I switched tack and asked her about her Malaysian boyfriend. Nina told me she met Jai sometime in January last year and within weeks he proposed to her, promising her that they would get married in Dec 2008.
When I asked her whether they had used contraception during sex, Nina said no. I asked her why and she replied: “My boyfriend said that even if I got pregnant, I would still marry him, since we already agree to marry in December.”
Nina tells me that she doesn’t know the full and real name of the father of her baby and that she can’t contact him because he has changed his mobile number.
The social worker and I were floored. Was this 26-year-old so naïve? How could she be so taken in by sweet words? Not only that, did she know that she was putting herself at risk at catching sexually transmitted infections (STI), including HIV and Aids?
It has lead me to think that despite the good work that migrant welfare groups like HOME and TWC2 have done for foreign domestic workers and foreign workers, perhaps these organisations should come up with a safe sex campaign for maids not just for preventing pregnancies, but also HIV/Aids and STIs, and make it part of their regular outreach work.
3 responses so far
Although Nina may be 26, she presumably came from a 3rd world country to work here as a maid. So we cannot assume that she should be as knowledgeable about sex education as a 26 year old Singaporean should be. She could have come from a small village where everybody knows everybody and everybody trusts everybody. This could be mistaken as being naive in a dog-eat-dog big city.
Why worry about sex education for maids when the sex education for local Singaporean kids is obviously not working? In a country that takes pride in it’s education, there is a frightening level of ignorance when it comes to safe sex education for the young. What’s even more frightening is the fact that ignorance is being promoted as morality.
Take the recent AWARE saga where the key issue was “Sexuality Education” program that AWARE was running in conjunction with several schools. The protagonist of that saga made an issue of how this program promoted homosexuality and all sorts of “deviant” behaviour like “Pre-Marital Sex.” So much focus was placed on how homosexuality and premarital sex was contrary to the “Mainstream Values” of the majority of Singaporeans that everyone lost sight of certain ground realities.
Yes, I can understand how many people may not like the idea that their “innocent” children are having sex before marriage. Many more will not like the idea that their children have different sexual orientation from the mainstream. But the likes and dislikes of the majority are not the main issues here.
There is NO evidence to suggest that homosexuality or pre-marital sex are the root cause of any particular social problem. You cannot die a horrible death because you are a homosexual or you had sex before you went to ROM.
However, you will die horribly if you get AIDS and chances are you will become a social problem if you become a pregnant teen. If you look at MOH’s statistics on HIV, the average HIV patient is a heterosexual. More disturbingly the highest level of new infections amongst women come from ……”Married Women who have never had sex other than their partners.” It’s outrageous that a loyal married woman is in greater danger of getting HIV than a prostitute in Geylang.
How did this situation come about and how do we protect our teenagers from getting HIV or becoming pregnant before they’re ready to be parents? The obvious answer is to teach them the facts. Let’s look at the most obvious here:
a – Abstinence works best
b – Not every teen will abstain.
c – Not every teen who tells you they are abstaining is telling the truth.
d – In the absence of abstinence, condoms are the most effective way to prevent HIV.
e – In the absence of abstinence, birth control pills are the most effective way of preventing unwanted pregnancy.
However, if you even suggests teaching the kids about points d and e, you will get screams of indignation about how we are encouraging “deviant” behavior. So let’s follow some imaginary “Asian” value and non-existent tradition and keep the kids in the dark so as not not encourage them from doing the things that we don’t want them to do.
It’s too bad we’re so focused on the ‘main-stream values,’ that we forget the greatest value of Singapore – good old fashioned common sense. Why can’t we look at the studies that have been done.
In studies conducted in the USA, it’s been shown that States that had “Abstinence ONLY,” education programs had lower rates of teenage pregnancy than the States that taught “Abstinence PLUS,” meaning the value of condoms and birth control pills. Another noted study published in Public Library of Science Medicine in 2007, found that teenagers who were taught “Abstinence PLUS,” had greater knowledge of AIDS/HIV than their peers and more importantly were less likely to engage in less risky behavior like annal sex than those who were given an “Abstinence ONLY,” education.
So let’s stop obsessing with being “in-line” with the main stream values and actually start teaching things about sex that will actually prevent REAL social issues. Surely providing knowledge is a virtue worth celebrating.
I don’t think it is fair to say that maids come from third world countries therefore their ignorance about sex. It is the mode of relationships which leave them confused, and leave them vulnerable. I don’t think it is true that they are naïve, but that they play at being naïve because pregnancy equals repatriation for them. There are too many stories of maids breaking up homes, seducing their employers, crying rape when their advances and seduction fail to get their madam replaced. We had two maids – one married and the other single – both tried it with my husband. Both got sent home. It is economic migration for maids – they want out of their poverty and the simplest, most accessible plan is to break up the home of the family they are working for, so they can replace the madam if they do not find their sir too distasteful or the home too poor for their taste. It is a very silly policy to have foreign domestic workers, better to let locals work part time and then go home than house some women who may look simple and pretend to be naïve, but plot to destroy and kill.