Why Aren’t We Having Babies?

 I got to admit that I have a soft spot for everything cute, namely “baby cute.” I’m more than happy to baby sit and I never had issues with things like changing nappies or having babies drool on me. My soft spot for small babies has meant that I ended up getting involved with single mothers and the tragedy at the end up the relationship was not so much the end of the relationship with the mother but with the kids. One of my great joys on social media is looking at other people’s baby photos.

 

Pure Happiness – But A lot of Work

Having said that, I have no great desire to have kids. I adopted Kiddo seven years back and we’re very close and she’s been a great joy. However, now that she’s grown up (over 21), I don’t see myself becoming a dad again and I’m in no rush for her to make me a grandpa (though I’ve been told being a granddad is a lot more fun than being a dad). To me, its more important that she does what she wants to do than make me a grandfather.

Unfortunately for many policy makers around the world, I’m not an odd ball when it comes to the idea of having kids. I grew up in Western Europe and the big issue there was the lack of babies and the growing number of old folks. Now that I’ve moved back to Singapore, there’s a similar issue. Singaporeans are simply not making babies and we’re not the only ones. Japan, the first Asian nation of global economic significance has the world’s oldest population. Even China, the home of 18 percent of the world’s population is now scrambling to get people to make babies. The infamous “one-child” policy of the 70s has now been replaced with a policy to get families to have three kids.

There’s a further issue that compounds the fact that people are not having kids. Namely the fact that it’s the richer societies that are not reproducing. Western Europe, which has the world’s best standard of living has been going grey for the longest of time. America, the world’s superpower remains relatively youthful because of the number of immigrants who cross the border every year. In Asia, it’s the “developed” nations like Japan and Singapore who are not reproducing. China’s greying population coincides with its rise as a big power.

The reluctance of the “educated” and “well to do” was something that the late Lee Kuan Yew was perplexed by. Unfortunately for him, he failed to understand some basics about life on the ground. One of the key side effects of “educating” people is the fact that people realise that they have a lot more opportunities to do things that their parents never even dreamed of as being possible. This has been especially true for women, who suddenly had career opportunities beyond being the kitchen and the bedroom.

The second reason for not wanting to make babies is the stress of modern living.  Whilst I don’t have the immediate statistics, experience suggests that we are living in a world where the cost of everything except incomes is going up. I’m not the only person who has had to do more just to earn the same income.

Singapore’s government is not the only government trying to solve the problem the easy way – namely using cash incentives. In Singapore, the government does things like subsidizing time in the maternity ward.

However, raising a child is a long-drawn-out process that does not end with birth. Being a parent is a lifelong commitment and as my mother said to me once, “Only have children if you can give them a life better than the one you had.”

Now, the question remains for many of us in the developed world – are we in a position to give our kids a better life than the one we had? It’s something policy makers around the world should think about when looking at the statistics about the lack of babies being made.