Parenting in the modern age – a battle for attention

SINGAPORE - Not too long ago, the boundaries parents set for their children involved curfews, and rules about where they could go and activities they should avoid, such as smoking or drinking.

Playing meant leaving your house to meet up with friends or neighbours at the playground, for a game of “catching” or football. Connecting with people meant using your home phone to dial their number when you knew they were at home.

Watching a favourite programme meant checking the TV guide and looking forward to the start of the programme.

Parenting in that era was more about physical supervision and direct communication with no distraction from personal screens.

Today, parenting involves not just being physically present, but guarding the “front door” to a digital world that is always open.

And along with that come many other challenges.

Today’s parents must contend with the rising cost of living, and juggle pressures on their time with the desire to be involved parents to raise children who are well-adjusted and high-functioning. Many couples are dual-income earners, with both parents choosing to work to thrive in today’s economy, and wrestling with work-life balance.

Buffeted on all sides, they also likely need to care for elderly parents in a super-aged society.

The digital pacifier and its impact on the developing brain

With many parents at work for hours or harried by their multiple commitments, there is a temptation to use screens as “babysitters”. Many children today are introduced to screens very early on.

It is a common sight to see babies in strollers absorbed by the flashing lights and bright colours on their parents’ smartphones, or toddlers at dinner tables focused on a tablet so they are quiet and manageable.

While these devices are frequently used as “babysitters” to give parents a break, the developmental cost is becoming clearer.

The developing brains of very young children require sensory-rich, three-dimensional interaction to thrive. The two-dimensional glow of a screen may trade immediate convenience for a long-term loss.

Doctors are clear that children under 18 months old should not have any screen use.

At this age, children learn best through real-world interactions – touching, feeling, moving and engaging in “serve and return” exchanges with caregivers.

Adjunct Associate Professor Chong Shang Chee from the National University Hospital said research shows that infants struggle to learn from two-dimensional formats on screens, a phenomenon known as “video deficit”.

“They do not have the real-life schema to connect what they see on screen to the world around them,” she said.

Singapore’s largest birth cohort study, which tracked 168 children for more than 10 years, found that heavy screen exposure before age two leads to “premature specialisation” of brain networks.

Called the Growing Up in Singapore Towards healthy Outcomes study, it found that this early shift leaves children less adaptable and slower at making decisions by age eight.

When they turn 13, this cognitive delay translates into higher symptoms of anxiety.

However, even if parents regulate screen use, they may not have control over how other caregivers, such as domestic helpers or grandparents, choose to occupy their children with screen time.

The silent family gathering

One of the more visible impacts of the digital age is perhaps on the parent-child relationship itself.

It has become a familiar sight to come across a disengaged family having dinner at a restaurant. Everyone is physically present, yet miles apart, choosing to be engaged on their individual devices rather than with one another.

For many children and teenagers, the online space has become a sanctuary, a place where they feel more engaged, understood or connected through gaming communities and social media than with their own families.

While these digital connections matter to the child, they could come at the expense of familial bonding.

Even when children are physically home with family, the round-the-clock availability of the internet could pivot them mentally elsewhere, leading to a sense of disconnection that parents often struggle to bridge. Artificial intelligence has worsened this, with many stories of how chatbots, without parents knowing, validate and encourage self-harming behaviour.

The conundrum is when parents themselves wrestle with their own screen dependency and struggle to be role models for their children on appropriate phone use.

Limiting adults’ phone use is especially challenging given how much they rely on it for everyday tasks.

In a day, parents could use their phone to set alarms, check work e-mail, send messages, pay bills, take pictures, navigate unfamiliar territory, get information, order at a restaurant, organise their schedules and get updates from their child’s school. This is apart from using the phone for entertainment.

When a child observes their parents absorbed in checking their e-mail or scrolling through social media, it models a behaviour whereby the digital world takes precedence over the physical one.

Cost of living and work-life pressures

A YouGov survey in April 2025 of Singaporeans’ concerns found that 72 per cent listed the cost of living as their most important concern. Another conducted in February 2026 found housing affordability and cost of living named as areas for improvement.

With Singapore being one of the most expensive places to live in, dual-income households are increasingly the norm. The percentage of married couples in resident households where both spouses were employed rose from 47 per cent in 2010 to about 53 per cent in 2020.

According to an Australian study conducted in 2020, Singaporeans work an average of 44 hours a week, which is among the longest in the world. Even with more flexible hours and hybrid work, balancing work with care of the family is a real juggling act.

Professor Setoh Pei Pei, a professor of psychology at Nanyang Technological University, said children thrive on warm, present and responsive parenting.

However, cost of living concerns and demanding work hours make this the hardest to provide.

“Providing quality time and attention to our children could be challenging because we devote most of our quality hours to our paid work. Then our leftover time is what we might spend with the kids,” said Prof Setoh.

She added that this is intensified by an “always-on” culture where smartphones blur the lines between professional and personal life.

Domino effect on mental health

Singapore’s Ministry of Health is working to address the harms of digital technology on young people. An expert panel found the problem not to be social media per se, but factors such as the lack of a robust age verification feature, the autoplay function, which keeps users continually scrolling, and the fact that adults who are strangers can directly message young people.

It is also shifting resources to much-needed prevention of mental health issues and early intervention amid a global epidemic of worsening mental health.

In Singapore’s first nationwide mental health study of young people carried out in 2022, nearly a third of those aged 15 to 35 reported severe or very severe symptoms of depression, anxiety or stress.

They were also more likely to report having symptoms if they had experienced cyberbullying, had moderate to severe concerns about their body shape or spent more than three hours daily on social media, said the Institute of Mental Health, which is embarking on another study in 2026.

Parents play a vital role in their children’s mental health, including identifying signs of distress and providing support, making involved and empathetic parenting all the more important today.

Prof Setoh suggests a mindset change could be helpful.

“In Singapore, we value familial harmony and academic achievement, and there is a mindset that ‘my child is my report card’,” said Prof Setoh.

This creates pressure to perform on children and parents, she added, as a child’s grades are seen as a reflection of a parent’s competence and social standing.

Asian parents may use strict control to drive academic success, but Prof Setoh suggests that this can backfire.

In her research, she found that parents who use harsh discipline to enforce control may damage the parent-child bond, leading to more acting-out behaviour in children.

Furthermore, tired parents may not have the bandwidth to engage in meaningful interactions with their children, and may replace their presence with devices.

This lack of connection has a measurable cost, said Prof Setoh, as poor quality of parent-child ties has been linked to weaker resilience in children, and higher levels of depressive symptoms by the time they are teenagers.

Ultimately, the mental health of the parent and the quality of the parent-child relationship are significant contributors to children’s well-being.

Helping families thrive

Navigating the challenges of parenting today requires what Prof Setoh calls “giving parents the conditions to actually parent”.

This begins with systemic stability, by ensuring access to housing, healthcare, and financial aid to reduce the socio-economic stress that often fuels harsh parenting.

This should be matched with work-life balance. Flexible work arrangements are a good start, but for a parent to unplug from work and be fully present with their children, workplaces need to shift away from the “always-on” culture and let families have time together.

Strengthening resources like family service centres, after-school programmes and support for seniors can alleviate pressure on the “sandwich generation”, tasked with caring for both their children and aged parents.

When society reinforces these community links, parenting need not be done in isolation, but with the help of a village.

Building a society that values and aids the role of a parent helps children get what they need to thrive in this digital age – the loving attention of a parent.

Changing mindsets, reducing academic pressure

For decades, academic excellence has been a cornerstone of Singapore society.

As the main driver of social mobility and survival, this meritocratic drive nurtured a high-stakes environment where national assessments like the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) and processes like the Primary 1 registration exercise became sources of mounting pressure and anxiety for children and their parents.

For many families, these educational milestones felt like pivotal moments where being at the top of the game was of utmost importance. This led to a culture of private tutoring, competition and narrowing definitions of what it meant to grow up successfully.

To counter this overly competitive mindset, the Government has, over the years, made a series of structural changes to shift the focus to a joy of learning, de-emphasise grades and celebrate diverse talents.

One was to remove mid-year examinations at all mainstream primary and secondary schools, and delay formal assessments until Primary 3. This gave schools more room to build learning foundations without the pressure of testing.

To remove the stigma of academic labels, the system of placing students into streams like Express, Normal (Academic) and Normal (Technical) after the PSLE was replaced with full subject-based banding.

Under this new model, secondary school students can take various subjects at three different levels based on their strengths. For example, students weak in mathematics could take the subject at the easiest G1 level, but English literature at the most challenging G3 level if they are more adept at languages.

At the primary level, the stress of the PSLE and placement in secondary schools was mitigated by replacing the T-score system with Achievement Levels (ALs).

With T-scores, pupils were graded up to 100 marks for each of the four subjects tested, while the new AL system categorised scores into eight broad groups, reducing pressure from minor differences in marks.

This meant that children who scored 85 or 91 in a subject would receive the same AL band of 1, rather than being differentiated by six marks.

Another move to quell the rat race in education was the recent discontinuation of the Gifted Education Programme in its original form.

Instead of identifying “gifted” pupils at Primary 4 and moving them to a few select schools, the updated approach ensures there are specialised programmes at all primary schools to stretch higher-ability pupils.

The Ministry of Education is engaging the community through a series of conversations on education, as part of ongoing reviews into the high-stakes nature of the PSLE and the fairness of the Primary 1 registration process.

These reviews aim to further level the playing field, and ensure school admissions and educational pathways remain fair and accessible, instead of being disadvantaged by a parent’s alumni connections or where one lives.

As these shifts take effect, the Republic is attempting a cultural pivot, encouraging families to move from a mindset of competition and labels, to one of celebrating individuals’ unique strengths and interests.