Sociologist Teo You Yenn’s Unease spells out familiar woes of parenting and runaway private tuition

Unease

By Teo You Yenn
Non-fiction/Ethos Books/Paperback/263 pages/$30

The shimmering title Unease printed in large distended letters on the book cover is immediately telling: moire effect blurring the word beyond legibility, a racetrack of meaningless cul-de-sacs and dead ends that pushes one to look away out of discomfort.

It is a bold and rather perfect design for Singapore sociologist-in-chief Teo You Yenn’s new tract tackling Singapore’s education system and the burdens of contemporary parenting, which increasingly comes with a side of a sense of “Are things supposed to be this hard?”

This is Teo’s unofficial sequel to the eye-opening This Is What Inequality Looks Like (2018), an expose of Singapore’s growing stratification that illumed the flesh-and-blood lives of rental flat dwellers who, until that point, went largely unscrutinised.

It provoked official responses, but rode a wave of public interest to 80 weeks on The Straits Times’ bestsellers list.

Her new conceptual frame is more nebulous and less explosive, mostly because its topic is already so familiar to readers. The word unease is picked for its effective capturing of the niggling stress, pressure and unhappiness of bringing up a child in utopic, nominally pro-family Singapore.

To give sociological weight to a feeling that is often brushed away, Teo interviews 92 people of divergent backgrounds. The repeated patterns coagulate into rigorous social fact: that the burden of childcare outside of finances still falls disproportionately upon women, who suffer an omnipresent guilt of not devoting enough resources to prepare their child academically.

Men are still talked about as preternaturally incompetent at childcare, an impression helped by their already being more hands-on than their fathers. There is the “working mum” but no “working dad”, Teo observes.

In more than one case, women pay for tuition and other enrichment classes secretly out of their own pockets because their husbands do not think these are necessary.

It is a timely, and meticulously structured, diagnosis. The country is, after all, in the throes of a rearguard campaign to counter falling birthrates, and tinkering with the structure of examinations and streaming.

Teo’s proposals shy away from more sexy ones to reiterate a broader re-orientation that Singapore already ostensibly subscribes to. So, instead of calling for regulation of the $1.8 billion tuition industry – up from 2008’s $820 million – she reiterates aspirations for more pathways to success, a more even split between father and mother childcare leave right from the off so childcaring habits are not entrenched, and less correlation between academic results and pay, citing the “scholars” versus “farmers” bifurcation in the civil service.

Cumulatively, though, these amount to a reprioritisation of values and a reassessment of the trade-offs made in favour of tradition, productivity and business.

After the “spectacular failure in its four decades of pro-natalist policies”, she urges more muscular intervention. Care cannot be designated as a realm outside the reach of market and state, she writes in one of her more potent sentences.

As a sociologist, Teo is compassionate of individuals and critical of systems, and sometimes, the attribution of all individual action to existing policies can feel too lopsided.

She rejects government rhetoric that it is parents who themselves perpetuate a “kiasu” culture against the authority’s best intentions, when this could be more partial.

Parents battling for volunteer hours so their children can get preferential entry to good primary schools is wholly blamed on the existence of this scheme and on the qualitative differences between schools.

But it can feel overly determined. Why do some parents more than others feel better able to not join the WhatsApp chat groups comparing tuition centre notes? The refusal of some men to take on greater responsibilities of care surely also stems from extra-policy origins, which in future could become more of a problem with the ascent of manosphere ideologies.

There might yet be further cultural causes for Singapore parents’ seeming unwillingness to forge their own paths, which are tributaries feeding this unsustainable norm. Some factors not explored here: A general scarcity mentality, collectivism or an Asian matter of face.

All these again spill out of education policy, though they could also themselves be caused by and be mitigated through policies. In any case, the entrenchment of culture only proves Teo’s point: that, at least, in Singapore, it is easier for the Government to take the lead.

In her thesis, Teo makes sure to contextualise these pressures with inequality, which manifests in how parents of different classes strategise for their children.

Education, like housing, then becomes rapidly linked with inter-generational wealth and birth advantage, which could fuel a toxic cycle of unease among parents at education’s existential cost – until the whole illusion of meritocracy comes crashing down.

What Unease would also have benefited from is a bigger-picture, even if brief, comparison of parents’ woes from other developed countries, which for similar or divergent reasons are also in the same desperate paddling against the tide of falling fertility rates.

These, Teo leaves to more ambitious studies. Parenthood has never been easy, and there will always be a gap between idea and reality. Between these two, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, falls the shadow. Faced with this, Teo refuses to look away – and paints a depressing picture.

Rating: ★★★★☆

If you like this, read: Public Subsidy/Private Accumulation: The Political Economy Of Singapore’s Public Housing by Chua Beng Huat (2024, NUS Press, $26.17). The NUS Professor Emeritus notes that public housing is a guarantor of the ruling party’s legitimacy and discusses whether the resale market for HDB flats has perpetuated wealth inequality.