MP Seah Kian Peng’s speech in Parliament on the Maintenance of Parents Act includes a rather curious notion of what filial piety is.

Sir, the forgoing speaks to the revision of the Act, which I hope will apply only to extreme cases. But I would like to end my speech with something of a more garden variety. Here is a practical and concrete way to realize filial piety.

Sir, we have already done this with the Act – but this act is a stick, to force people who would otherwise ignore their parents, to provide some minimum sum for them.

Now, can we have a carrot? Can the MCYS help us to set up a ‘filial piety’ savings account with tax incentives? Banks can set up such accounts to encourage children to contribute on a regular basis a certain amount of money. This account is in the name of their parents and which can only be drawn down by parents upon reaching a certain age, perhaps at 62 yrs.

These contributions will receive tax exemption for the contributors.

The contributions and accounts can also be set up for uncles, aunties and other relatives. One major local bank has already made the first move to recognize the importance of planning for our parents’ future as they age. They call it a SmartSenior Account. This is a joint account for children to open with their parents, allowing them to receive their monthly allowance from their children.

From that quote, we can conclude two things:

1. Seah thinks that the Maintenance of Parents Act (MPA) is a way to “realize” filial piety, since this realization is what he refers to when he says “we have already done this with the Act”.
2. Seah thinks that providing tax incentives for children to contribute to their parents’ bank accounts is a way to “realize” filial piety, via using a “carrot”.

1. is clearly bizarre since the MPA is in place ostensibly to deal with cases where filial piety is lacking. Nobody thinks that an unfilial child who was not supporting her parents before becomes filial when she is forced to by the MPA. That is because we think filial piety is a value that one possesses; it is not defined just by the act of supporting one’s parents, but also by whether one’s support is motivated by the right reasons.

2. may not seem bizarre at first, but it really is symmetric with the “stick” case. Merely contributing to one’s parents’ bank accounts is not a sufficient condition for filial piety; it may not be filial piety if it is done out of certain motives. In this case, the motivation may be financial. More commonly, it may be the case that children who detest their parents continue making token financial contributions to them for fear of social disapproval from their friends and relatives. It seems doubtful, to say the least, whether these children are being filial, but under Seah’s criterion it seems that he would still consider them to be “realizing” filial piety.

Mr Seah’s introduction of the concept of “realizing” filial piety seems to be a slide towards equating filial piety with certain actions regardless of the motivations behind those actions, and outright contradicts his claim that the MPA was introduced “to deter unfilial adult children from abdicating their responsibility of maintaining their parents” (emphasis mine). Clearly, if the children are unfilial, filial piety is not “realized” by the MPA.

I would not be surprised if with the incursion of such terminology into the public discourse, filial piety becomes increasingly taken to be some kind of outcome or to be a class of actions defined by their outcome. This may be linked to the “pragmatism” that pervades Singaporean society, which values results above everything else. It would also be very rhetorically convenient for values to be defined as outcomes, since the still rather effective appeal to “Asian” or “Confucian” values can then be used to justify any policies that lead to those outcomes.