For subscribers
When did conversations on parenthood and fertility in S’pore become such a downer?
The discourse on family formation is lacking one thing.
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Some approaches implicitly frame fertility as a cost-benefit problem, treating parenthood as something that must be made cheaper, easier or more compatible with work.
ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
Amy Lim and Peter Waring
Singapore is the small state that could. Whether facing a world upended by tariffs, a deadly pandemic or an Asian financial crisis, we seem to be able to buck the trend and make our own luck in all but one area: baby-making.
In One Man’s View Of The World, founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew confessed of Singapore’s declining birth rate: “I cannot solve the problem, and I have given up. I have given the job to another generation of leaders. Hopefully, they or their successors will eventually find a way out.”
