Singles Villages for real

Update 2nd January 2017: What is there not to like about this? If I were a young single professional, this will be ideal.

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Some weeks ago someone in Singapore suggested that 'singles villages' be built in Singapore.

As if with one voice, the writer was showered with brickbats and worse.

So I stood up for him by providing a different perspective of the appeal of living as single adults in Straits Times Forum. Clearly something else more important was happening that day as nobody seemed to have read my piece.

A stone's throw from Wembley Stadium a huge block of 'singles rooms' has just been completed.

The objective here is not to match-make singles. Single adults from all over the country come to London to work and they need a place to live.

What I found quite astonishing was that Singaporeans objected to singles living apart from their parents. Some say this is equivalent to student housing.

It is not.

Clearly those who made such comments have no idea as to what student housing and/or single living is like.

Then there were comments, hinting at fears, about indiscriminate sex if singles were allowed to live apart from their families liddat.

Come on. Let us not be naïve. Young adults will indulge in sex whether or not they live with their parents if they are so inclined. Living in one's parents' home does not preclude promiscuity.

It seems so totally illogical to me that parents think it is OK to send teenagers across the world to live with strangers in student housing, or shared houses in order to gain an education.

How do they ensure that their children do not indulge in indiscriminate sex when these children are times zones away?

What about graduate children who work abroad, living on their own, or with colleagues, etc?

If that is OK, why is it so objectionable for unmarried children to live with other singles away from their families in Singapore?

The objection is just nonsensical, as far as I am concerned.

An old classmate posted a photo of her son working abroad, ironing his own shirt. Yes, that is just what we need. Getting sons to iron their own shirts whether or not they live with us.