Are They Being Brought Up in a Better World?

 

Singapore’s government has been in something of a jam in the last few decades. Singapore is getting older and people are not having babies. On Friday 24 February 2023, it was announced that our fertility rate had hit an all time low, a low so low that it even became the topic of international news:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-24/singapore-fertility-rate-falls-to-lowest-on-record-at-1-05#xj4y7vzkg

The decline in the fertility rate has been something the government has been desperately trying to address for the longest of times. We had budget day before the announcement of the record low fertility rate. In that budget, our Prime Minister-In- Waiting, Mr. Lawrence Wong announced that he was throwing even more money at couples if they had more children. The logic behind Mr. Wong’s announcement was simple – since the we, the people, say that having kids is expensive, the government will make it less expensive and so we should jolly well start reproducing.

Unfortunately, Mr. Wong’s solution to the problem isn’t new. If anything, it’s the definition of insanity being trying the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. The government has been throwing subsidies at couples to have babies and yet our fertility rates keep declining.

The good news is the decline in fertility rates isn’t unique to Singapore. It’s something that is happening in just about every advanced economy on the planet. Fertility rates in the US, Western Europe and Japan have been on the decline for the longest of times and now places like South Korea, Singapore and most worryingly China are following suite.

It’s this simple. As economies grow, they need more workers. Hence, women who were once expected to stay at home are given opportunities to join the workforce and in cases like Singapore, they’re expected to be fully participating in the work force (my grandfather would not tolerate the idea of my grandmother working – I will stay away from a girl who won’t work). The reality is that as women discover greater opportunities in the work force, the less likely they’ll want to stay home and become baby making machines. Look at the fact that a woman is most fertile (twenties to mid-thirties) at best time that one has when it comes to building a career and having a life.

So, if one is serious about wanting to make babies, particularly the right type of babies (in Singapore it specifically refers to babies from graduate Chinese mothers), one has to start by asking the people equipped to have babies why they’re not making babies in the first place.

Women have been fairly clear. Things like flexible hours at work and more child care facilities have been examples of what has been asked for. However, Singapore’s government remains obsessed with the work culture that lead to the problem in the first place. Instead of using Covid to restructure the economy, we rushed back to an industrial age form on work, doing our best to get people back to the office or factory for eight hours a day. The interest of the landlords has thus far proven greater than the need of the productive population.

Then, there’s the reality of children. I’m speaking as a guy who loves babies. I’ve always been fascinated by small people and after a point, I ended up getting involved with single mothers. Also ended up liking their kids more than I liked the mothers. Looking at chubby-baby like things gives me a shoot of joy – its like have an overdose of Prozac:

 

 My Prozac Dose – Copyright The Daily Mirror

Given that I have a soft spot for chubby cute things, one has to question why someone like me has not started a family filled with babies.

The answer lies in a question my mother asked, which is “Are you brining them up in a world that will be better than the one you were brought up in?” I adopted the Evil Teen back in 2014, so I am a parent and her existence in my life look at my mother’s question. Is she growing up in a world that is better than the one I grew up in?

Unfortunately, I don’t think the answer is yes. Sure, new generations have opportunities that older ones didn’t have. I, for example, have more access to information at a click of a button than my parents and grandparents had from access to physical libraries. If the Evil Teen has kids, my grandkids will probably have tools that make Google old fashioned.

However, it seems that opportunities are becoming harder to get by. Dad’s older brother once said that all you needed to know is how to read an write and paper qualifications didn’t matter. However, he was speaking in a day when having O-Levels was a big deal. These days, you a bachelor degree is the basic entry level requirement to get a job and who is to say that one may need a masters degree to clean toilets in future?

In Singapore, we take a perverse pride in having a demanding education system, where kids need to spend further hours in tuition on top of basic school, just so that they can pass exams. I used to hate parent-teachers’ meetings because the only solution the teachers ever seemed to propose was “more tuition.” Surely, there must be something wrong with the system if a child needs more teaching on top of the teaching that’s already being provided.

You could argue that the regime we put our kids though is worth it, if it prepared them for life. Unfortunately, despite all the rigorous training we put them through at school, that doesn’t seem to be the case. We are told that “foreign talent” is essential to do the jobs of the future that are being created by the economy. Here’s the question that nobody seems to ask – if our education system is so good, why can’t the locals do the jobs that the economy is creating.

Then, there’s the fact that wages don’t seem to be rising along with cost and we’re told that we need to be “more productive” if we want more money.

When look at all these factors, its easy to see why nobody wants to have babies. The lack of babies is far greater than a question of the cost of the maternity ward. Subsidising the maternity ward is like subsidizing the cost of a car. There’s the cost of bringing the child into adulthood and just as there’s cost in running a car. Then, there’s the question of the end goal. Is that child going to have a better life than the one you had or is he or she going to have a life filled with stresses that go beyond reasonable?