lee kuan yew and his daughter
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THE FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF SINGAPORE, MR.LEE KUAN YEW'S LAMENTATION OVER HIS ONLY DAUGHTER'S UNMARRIED STATE AND HER FEELINGS REGARDING HER CHOICE TO REMAIN A SPINSTER...A VERY GOOD READ!TRANSCRIPT
After saying that one-third of men and women in Singapore were single "and quite comfortable
with their lives", the Minister Mentor said: "My daughter is one of them. What can I do?"
Then in an unusually emotional mood, Lee
told the young audience: "When she was in her
early30s, I told her, never mind all this."
My wife and I used to tell her, what you want
is a "Mrs"
(to her name).
She didn't think it was
funny.
Now, she is 50-plus. I'm getting old. I have a
pacemaker. We've got this big house, everything is looked after now, but what happens when we are no longer
there?
"Who's going to run this place? Who's going to
make sure that the maids are doing the right thing and so on and so forth?
That's the price she (Dr Lee) will have to
pay."
She says, I'll look after myself, but she has not
been looking after herself all these years."She went
abroad for her studies. And her cooking
was just to take the salmon and put it in
the microwave and heat it up. You can do it and then
go to the canteen, but
when you do that day after day ...
"It's a choice she has made and a choice that
35% of our women
are making."
Lee Wei Ling (Lee Kuan Yew's daughter)
as to the reason why she remained single - a good
read.
My parents have a loving relationship, but I knew I
could not live my life around a husband.My father became prime
minister in 1959, when I
was just four years old.
Inevitably, most people know me
as Lee Kuan Yew's daughter.
My every move, every word, is scrutinised and
sometimes subject to criticism. One
friend said I lived in a glass house.
After my father's recent comment on my lack
of culinary skills, another observed: 'You live in a
house without any walls.'
Fortunately, I am not easily embarrassed.
As long as my conscience
is clear, what other people
say of me does not bother me.
Indeed, I am open about my life since the more I
try to conceal from the public, the wilder the speculation
becomes. My father said of my
mother two weeks ago: 'My wife
was...not a traditional wife. She was educated, a professional woman... We had Ah Mahs(helpers,
maids),
reliable,professional,dependable. (My wife) came back every lunchtime to
have lunch with the children.'
Actually, my mother was a traditional wife and
mother. She was not traditional
only in
one respect: She was also a
professional woman and, for many years, the
family's main breadwinner.
One of my mother's proudest possessions is a
gold pendant
that my father commissioned for her. He
had a calligrapher engrave on
the pendant the following characters:
'xian qi liang mu¸'and
'nei xian wai de'.The first four characters mean virtuous wife and
caring mother.
The second four mean wise in looking after the
family, virtuous in behaviour towards the
outside world.
My mother lived her life around my father and,
while we were young, around
her children. I remember my mother protesting gently once
about something my father had
asked her to do... 'It is a partnership, dear,'
my father urged. 'But it is not an equal
partnership,' my mother replied.
The partnership may not have been exactly equal
at particular points in time. But over the years,
especially after my mother's health
deteriorated after she suffered a stroke, my
father was the one who took care of her.
She clearly indicated she preferred my father's
care to that of the doctors', in itself a revelation of the
quality of his care.
He remembers her complicated regime of
medications. Because she cannot see on the left side of her
visual field, he sits on her left during meals.
He prompts her to eat the
food on the left side of her plate
and picks up whatever food her left hand drops
on the table. I have always admired my father for his dedication
to Singapore, his determination to do what
is right, his courage in standing up to foreigners who try to tell us how to
run our country. But my father was also
the eldest son in a typical Peranakan family.
He cannot even crack a soft-boiled egg -
such things not being expected of men,
especially eldest sons, in Peranakan
families. But when my mother's health deteriorated,
he readily adjusted his lifestyle to accommodate
her,took care of her
medications and lived his life around her.
I knew how much effort it took him to do all this,
and I was surprised that he was able to make the
effort... If my parents have such a loving relationship, why
then did I decide to remain
single? Firstly, my mother set the
bar too high for me. I could not
envisage being the kind of wife and mother she
had been. Secondly, I am
temperamentally similar to my father.
Indeed, he once said to me: 'You have all my traits
but to such an exaggerated degree that
they become a disadvantage in you.'
When my father made
that pendant for my mother, he also
commissioned one for me. But the words he chose
for me were very different from
those he chose for my mother.
On one side of my pendant was engraved
'yang jing xu rui',
which means to conserve energy and build up
strength. On the other side was
engraved
'chu lei ba cui', which means to stand out
and excel.The latter was added just for completion.
His main message was in the first phrase, telling
me, in effect, not to be so
intense about so many things in life.
I knew I could not live my life around a husband;
nor would I want a husband to live his life around me. Of
course, there are any number of variations in
marital relationships between those extremes.
But there is always a need
for spouses to change their
behaviour or habits to suit each other.
I have always been set in my ways and did not fancy changing my behaviour or
lifestyle. I had my first date when I was 21 years old. He was
a doctor in the hospital
ward I was posted to. We went
out to a dinner party. I noted that the other
guests were all rich socialites. I dropped him like a hot
potato.
In 2005, while on an African safari with a small group of friends, one of
them, Professor C.N. Lee, listed the men who had tried to woo me. There were three besides the
first. Two were converted into friends and another, like the first, was
dropped. I am now 54 years old and happily single. In addition
to my nuclear family, I have a close circle of
friends. Most of my friends are
men.
But my reputation is such
that their female partners would never consider me a
threat. More than 10 years ago,
when there was still a slim chance
I might have got married, my father told me:
'Your mother and I could be selfish and feel happy
that you remain single and can
look after us in our old age..
But you will be lonely.'
I was not convinced. Better one person feeling
lonely than two people miserable
because they cannot adapt
to each other, I figured. I do not regret my choice. But I want to end with a warning to young men and women: What works for me may not work for
others. Many years ago, a young single woman asked me
about training in neurology in a
top US hospital... advised her to 'grab the
opportunity'. She did and stayed away for eight years. She returned to
Singapore inher late 30s and now
worries that she may have missed her chance to get
married.Fertility in women drops dramatically with
age, and older mothers run
the risk of having offspring with
congenital abnormalities.
Recent studies show also that advanced paternal
age is associated with an
increased risk of neuro- developmental disorders
in offspring, such as autism and
schizophrenia, not to mention dyslexia and a
subtle reduction in intelligence. Men can also
suffer from diminished fertility with
age although there is wide individual variation.
I would advise young men and women not to delay
getting married and having children. I say this
not to be politically correct.I say it in all sincerity because I
have enjoyed a happy family life as a
daughter and a sister,and I see both my brothers
enjoying their own families.
Dr Lee Wei Ling
The writer is the director of the National Neuroscience.
TrinityOctober 2009