Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s National Day Rally announcements of enhanced support for families, including more childcare leave, increased child credits, and preschool fee reductions, have landed well with families who, however, believe more needs to be done.
For marine industry sales manager Dalreena Poonam Gill, 32, the expanded childcare leave stood out as the most useful measure. “As a working mother, there are inevitably times when your child is sick, has school matters to attend to, or simply needs you to be there,” she said, adding that the boon of flexibility eases tensions.
She also welcomed the S$2000 annual child credits, noting that costs do not taper off after infancy. “School-related costs, enrichment activities and everyday expenses all add up over the years.”
Still, she cautioned that financial incentives alone will not erase parents’ anxieties about raising a family – they merely offer temporary relief from the pressure.
As a single parent to a 6-year-old, after parting ways with her ex-husband, she said, “financial support helps, but the emotional and practical readiness to raise another child matters just as much,” adding that choosing the right life partner with whom one can raise a child has become more consequential now.
This also reflects the complexities of finding these long-term partners, as people have to navigate modern dating while coping with dating app fatigue.
Jayasutha Samuthiran and Gouthaman Haridass, 35 and 37 respectively, parents of three children aged four, three and one month, echoed the sentiment that these measures are beneficial but not holistic.
This feels “less like another one-off incentive for people to have babies and more like an acknowledgement that raising children involves costs – both financial and in terms of time – that continue for many years,” Ms Jayasutha said.
With six days of childcare leave disappearing quickly across three young children, the new 12-day allowance for larger families offers “substantially more breathing room.” However, there are caveats.
“There is a difference between being legally entitled to childcare leave and feeling completely comfortable using it,” she said, stating that on the other side of the ledger, people who are expected to pick up the slack to accommodate parental leave may develop resentment.
“Parents also need to recognise that colleagues without children have equally legitimate claims on their time,” Ms Jayasutha added.
Both Ms Dalreena and Ms Jayasutha observed that people are also marrying later, establishing careers later and having more individual aspirations and lifestyle choices. “I don’t think Singapore can simply subsidise its way to a dramatically higher birth rate,” Ms Jayasutha shared.
Beyond the financial inhibitions, there is also a shift in how parenting is understood, which is harder to legislate.
“Parents can feel that every child needs the best preschool enrichment, tuition, holidays, experiences, educational opportunities and individual attention. Parenthood starts looking like a 20-year project that has to be executed perfectly,” Ms Jayasutha said. Set against that standard, a second or third child can feel overwhelming.
Ms Dalreena agrees, stating, “even if couples can financially afford more children, they may wonder whether they have enough time, support and emotional capacity to raise them well.”
Alongside this, Ms Jayasutha also referred to a thought piece that reframed the debate about Singapore’s population, in which children were described as the country’s ‘human infrastructure’.
The children raised today will become the nurses, engineers and taxpayers an ageing Singapore will depend on – including those who do not have children themselves.
“That doesn’t mean people without children should somehow be made to feel indebted to parents,” she noted. Rather, the point is that supporting families should not be seen simply as the state funding an individual’s personal choice, but as an investment in the next generation whose benefits extend to society as a whole.
At the end of the day, they said the measures matter, and most families will feel the difference. But if having children still carries a cost to identity and ambition that no credit can offset, and if supporting families is still seen by some as someone else’s burden to bear, the policies will only go so far without the culture catching up.
“If Singapore can create a culture where both parents can be ambitious at work and deeply involved at home – without their colleagues feeling that they are being unfairly penalised for someone else’s family choices – that would be incredibly powerful,” Ms Jayasutha said.
