"Family and work cannot both be first for young parents," declared Shannon Ang, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

He was speaking at the Institute of Policy Studies’ (IPS) Singapore Perspectives 2024 conference on Jan. 29, 2024, as part of a panel titled "Youth and Family", discussing topics such as the growing embrace of singledom, postponement of marriage, and continual drop in total fertility rate across Singapore's changing demographic.

Other members of the panel were Darius Cheung, co-founder of 99.co, and Yuvan Mohan, Council Member for Families for Life and the National Youth Council (NYC).

The three men spoke about the various obstacles to youths' family aspirations, as well as how best to help young parents with children under their wings.

Relative scarcity

When it comes to local parents, Cheung said, it is not the "absolute dollar" that worries them.

While most families are able to manage providing their children with necessities, parents here fret instead over "relative scarcity", Cheung suggested.

He cited some examples, like feeling "inadequate" for being unable to afford to send their child to a more "premium" preschool as compared to their peers.

The answer is not to make things cheaper, but to do away with this concept of relative scarcity, Cheung opined.

One of the ideas he mooted included standardising preschools, so that parents do not have to fret about which preschool to choose for their child.

Expanding the definition of family 

Ang expanded on the idea of inequality.

"Families are intricately linked to inequality," he said. "Families with more resources can pass on their privileges and they can navigate challenges easier than those without."

For Ang, inequality has to be countered by expanding the idea of family.

This is so that risks and resources can be better pooled together.

He commented that the concept of  "family" could hinge less on blood ties, and more based on the people we choose to forge connections with.

"We can expand the idea of a family both in terms of our assumptions of who lives together, and who constitutes a family — whether it’s single parents, companions, same-sex couples and friends even."

He later questioned if public housing was being used as a way to ensure families fit into a traditional idea of what a family looks like, and contemplated the possibility of that changing in future, as Singapore embraces a "broader definition of what family looks like".

If so, policies like public housing allocation would change to allow more flexibility.

He cited the example of how in earlier decades, families in Singapore would frequently adopt each other's children.

Mohan also chimed in on this topic, citing his personal experience as the child of a single parent who had decided to buy a house together with his mother, even though it meant that he would not have certain housing options when it came time for him to get married.

He advocated for a "redefined mindset of what a house means” and suggested that if young couples could "explore things working out with [their] in-laws", they could open up more housing options for themselves and help alleviate a potential housing crunch.

Bearing the cost of bearing children

The panel also tackled the topic of cost, when it comes to having kids.

Giving birth is often seen as "taking away" from one's career, Cheung added.

Most parents end up having to eat into some of their annual leave to take care of their children.

There are also opportunity costs when it comes to decisions regarding their children's education.

For instance, parents who want to enroll their children in a certain primary school might have to give up having dual incomes, so one of them can volunteer at the primary school to improve their chances.

This could lead to younger parents postponing having children.

Ang added that when young people say they "can't afford" to raise children, it probably means that there are certain expectations they do not wish to face.

"We understand what young people say, but we may not pay enough attention to what they mean," he said.

He said the monetary and opportunity cost of parenthood "constantly inflates", all while parents have to deal with the stress of ensuring that one's child turns out successful.

The rat race

Speaking of the pressures to excel, Ang advocated for reducing the reward of precocity, "so that not all stakes are concentrated early on in the life".

He cited the competitive market of Build-to-Order (BTO) flats in Singapore, which benefit couples who make the decision to buy a house "very early on".

At the same time, early career decisions can also have high stakes, said Ang, raising the example of scholarship and other career programmes that require applicants to have graduated within a certain number of years, disqualifying older ones.

This "[forces] young parents to make an impossible choice", he said.

"There is an unhealthy valorisation of being young, of reaching some milestones very early on," Ang stated.

He added that the deadline for said milestones seem to be in one's 30s or even earlier.

"It just makes everything [unnecessarily] compressed at the beginning", he said.

He commented that on the one hand, we are told that Singapore's economic growth is "non-negotiable", but on the other, we are told that Singapore is pro-family and "made for families".

"We cannot expect young people to do everything and [work through] these contradictions on their own," Ang insisted.

He called family and career "endless vortexes" that would take up as much time as parents would allocate to each one.

Thus, he concluded, it is imperative to resolve this tension between work and family.

Regionalisation

In his speech, Yuvan raised another point about the proximity of one's regular activities.

This includes where people work, where they play, where they live, and where they learn.

"Now what we're seeing is... we live, then we go and drop our kids, then we go to work, then come back. We're making a whole circle," he said.

Having these locations relatively nearer would cut down on travelling time.

While Singapore has done well in catering to the leisure aspect, such as having a variety of malls in various areas, one area for improvement would be the regionalisation of schools.

Noting the common trend of people moving houses to be closer to schools, Yuvan suggested there was a need to unconcentrate schools from “a certain neighbourhood”.

This would a difference even though Singapore is not a large country, he said, saying that the pace of life in Singapore is "intense" and that if regionalisation can afford more of us “an hour more of breathing space” in a day, it would make a difference.

Outsourcing elderly care

"Being young in an aged society is different from being young in a young society," Ang stated.

Yuvan added that caregiving for elderly should be treated similarly to rearing children.

He went on to share how his family collaborated to help his grandmother who had been hospitalised.

"She has four kids, nine grandkids. My young uncle prepares the home so that my grandmother can go back after, my mum [buys] things for her, my elder aunt, who works in the hospital sector, does the interpretation of what the doctors are saying."

He indicated that it was difficult to expect the same level of responsibility from one's children, especially if one wasn't going to have as many kids to divvy up the load.

The solution to this was to not "demonise" or view institutionalised elder care with "negativity", Yuvan said.

It is only then that a family can make use of eldercare options so they can go about their daily lives, he concluded.

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