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Budget 2025: How far can financial support push the third-child dream?
When we consider why so many people stop at one or two, helping families get to three requires conditions to be right and positive spillovers to families and society.
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To create new third-child norms, policies must convince the average Singaporean family that having one more is a benefit to existing children.
PHOTO: ST FILE
Tan Poh Lin
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Why do people have kids? Most people have the first child because they want to experience parenthood and have a child to love. They may then have another one or two, so that their first child has siblings to play and grow up with, to have children of both genders, or to complete their family.
Although we tend to use the term “ideal family size”, it is more accurate to describe most of us as having an ideal range rather than a single fixed number. This can span from two to three for some of us, and from zero to one for others.
