Senior Minister of State Josephine Teo is well and truly on the baby offensive on Facebook.
And oddly enough, instead of balking or being turned off, people seem to be appreciating her attempts to encourage the having of more babies.
We'll explain.
Teo was after the 2015 General Election appointed the successor of Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Grace Fu, taking on the portfolio of Senior Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office, in the National Population and Talent Division. She also gave up her Finance portfolio for Foreign Affairs, on top of her existing Transport role.
Over the past two years (2014, 2015), Teo published a total of two Facebook notes. In the past two months, Teo put up six —
On New Year's Day, she wrote a note about babies, and welcoming the first newborns of the year, as is the tradition in Singapore. Not much for us to gain, apart from the fact that she has twin girls who are now 16 (well hey!) and a son.
Her second one was admittedly quite a government-sounding piece that we aren't sure how many might have read — our guess is, most likely, people glanced at the title and went "TL;DR":
BACK'>
TO SCHOOL!#BackToSchool! It’s the first day of school! I dropped by #PCFSparkletots at Blk 257 Bishan Street 22...
Here, we learned that she started off in a rental flat, then moved in with her grandfather above a shop, followed by a couple more HDB flats before moving in as a newlywed into a BTO flat that they couldn't afford professional renovation for.
She did end up plugging the various government initiatives available to support early parenthood, as she would have to inevitably, but hey — she didn't have to open up about her past, but she did, and it was nice.
A couple of weeks later, she posted this:
21'>
YEARS AND COUNTINGToday is my wedding anniversary. Though my husband is away for work, I'd still like to thank him...
Again, not a necessary move, but a pretty effective one — calculated or sincere, people were moved. And her reflection reminded us that politicians are humans too, with families and private lives, which in her case is laid quite bare for the public to see and judge.
In her next note in early February, Teo focused on her quest to increase support for dads taking paternity leave (did you know that the government pays for two weeks of it?!):
What we learned this time: she and her husband formed a dual-income family, and had a helper as well as both sides of parents to assist with care for her children.
Of course, on Valentine's Day, Teo had to strike — her note was about marriage and getting married, touching on the points of facets of a quality marriage, the arguments that contrary to what your judgey relatives might think, weddings don't have to be expensive and women don't always need to marry "up" or people of the same race.
HELLO,'>
MY #VALENTINE
February 19, 05:24 PM 
514 Chai Chee Lane 03-16, Singapore 469029 
Screenshot from ILoveChildren.sg
Image from ILoveChildren.sg's Facebook page