New television advertisements by the Family Planning Association focus on early family planning and the joy of having a newborn baby, but the association has denied the ads are designed to encourage people to have more children.
The two advertisements - centring on how a husband and a young boy prepare for the new member of the family - premiered on 27 public and paid channels in last night. The happiness and excitement of expecting and having a newborn in the family runs through the advertisements.
One of the clips features the father using watermelons to practice carrying a baby. He even squeezes into the baby's bed to experience life from the infant's perspective.
Another features a small boy who witnesses the changes of his pregnant mother. The clip ends with a voiceover: 'Now the baby has arrived, our family is bigger, more fun and happier.'
But the Family Planning Association said the promotional clips were not intended to encourage couples to have more children - a reference to Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's call last year for couples to have at least three children to help reverse a declining birth rate.
Rita Fan Hsu Lai-tai, a council member of the Family Planning Association and president of the Legislative Council, said the association did not want to give the message that people must have children or how many they should have.
