Parents, stop complaining about your children. Do it for the future of Singapore

I am going to give it to you straight: Singaporeans are going extinct. If we don’t start doing something now, there will soon be just a handful of remaining specimens in some centre somewhere, watched over by keepers trying to encourage breeding.

I am, of course, referring to our utterly dismal total fertility rate of 0.87. This number, a measure of how many children each woman here would have, needs to be 2.1 just to replace the population. If TFR were an exam, we, as a country, would have failed badly.

Unlike so many other exams we stress about, failing this one is actually existential. It is a very, very serious problem and we know how serious it is because we now have an inter-agency workgroup to tackle it. This is one of the highest levels of government problem-solving. I could be mistaken, but I believe it is almost on a par with an inter-ministerial task force.

While this is all well and good, I think this problem is too critical for ordinary Singaporeans to just wait around for a report or White Paper. This has an impact on everyone, so everyone must play a part. And I mean everyone, including people who already have children.

Parents – especially those with more than two children – I know you all likely believe that you have done your part. You’ve served the nation, you’ve had your children and now this whole extinction of the population thing is someone else’s problem.

Well, I’m here to tell you that parents have a part to play too. And there is one simple thing we can all start doing now: Stop complaining about our children.

I can explain.

Parenthood’s bad rep

In discussions I’ve had about how to improve the TFR, I constantly hear talk about how more needs to be done to help ease the burdens of parenting in Singapore. Inevitably, the conversation will ultimately include some mention of the stress of PSLE.

Now, I know we Singaporeans are a highly practical, forward-looking bunch, but are we really making bedtime decisions based on what might happen 12 years down the road?

Man: Hey honey, how about we stay home tonight and Netflix and chill?

Woman: Ok, but I don’t want to spend time helping anyone study the model method in 2038 so you better use some protection.

I do not believe this to be the case.

Rather, this focus on trying to reduce the burden on parents is a symptom of the larger problem impeding patriotism in the bedroom: Having kids has a reputation problem.

Indeed, when the inter-agency Marriage and Parenthood Reset Workgroup was launched a few months ago, it talked about the need to reframe parenthood. Those who are hesitant about having children tend to view parenthood through the lens of what they had to lose, rather than what they had to gain, it said.

I agree with this assessment but I don’t necessarily think that making parenthood less onerous is the solution. Now, I am not saying you shouldn’t try and make parenting less onerous, I am just saying that doing so may not achieve the desired reframing.

Parenthood has a bad reputation not just because it is hard, it is because we parents constantly tell people how hard it is.

Just ask any non-parent with friends who are parents what they have heard about having children.

Chances are, they have heard a lot about all the struggles: showing up at a concert looking like you’ve been in a brawl because the toddler you were carrying on your shoulders had a bowel movement without feeling a need to tell anyone while you were already late; having to deal with a child who has thrown herself onto the floor of a crowded mall because the queue for the desired restaurant is too long; getting smacked in the head in the middle of the night because the child sharing the bed had a dream about playing pickleball, just to name a few general examples about nobody in particular.

Why parents complain

To be fair to parents, it is not our fault. And I’m not talking about the stereotype of it being in our DNA because we are Singaporeans and Singaporeans are born with a complaining gene.

Complaining is actually an inevitable, natural manifestation of being a parent.

Raising another human is an incredibly profound experience. It is a mixture of every emotion you could ever feel all bundled up into one thing and then dialled up to 11. It is joy and fear and love and worry and pride and heartbreak mixed in a way that often defies language. It is, as the saying goes, like having your heart walk around outside your body.

It is also the hardest thing most people will ever do and, for the most part, thankless. It is so hard a task that while tweaking policy measures can make parenthood EASIER, it will never be able to make it EASY.

In summary, parenting is an endeavour whose joys are difficult to describe, but whose sacrifices are pretty easy to put into words. And it is an all-consuming effort of immense complexity that most people largely have to struggle with in private.

Put that all together and you have a very natural urge for parents to constantly talk about how difficult their lives are.

For the sake of the country, however, I think we need to stop.

Those thinking about having children are getting the wrong idea. They are focusing only on the negative bits without realising that despite how much we complain, a whole lot of people who have one kid want to have another.

That’s not to suggest that non-parents are completely blameless here. I mean, us parents would also quite like to try and talk to you about the joys of parenthood, but you don’t seem to want to hear that either.

I have it on good authority that non-parents would much rather parents tell them about their woes than hear them boast about being a parent. Occasionally, they come across a smug parent who is so insufferable it also makes non-parents not want to have kids for fear of turning into somebody like this.

Listening to someone describe how they are so “proud that their child toughed it out in economy class instead of business as they tried to teach them an important life lesson” does not make anyone feel patriotic in the bedroom.

So I am also not proposing that parents start talking about the joys of parenting. I am suggesting everyone just shut up about their kids and parenting philosophies. Surely there is something not child-related to talk about.

If you must, you can continue to complain to other parents – it’s too late to put them off it now – or warn would-be parents who are heavily pregnant, just be careful to make sure the non-parents are not within earshot.

Now this is not a magic bullet and may not yet fully solve the fertility issue. Way before anyone gets to the point of serving the nation, they first need to find someone to serve the nation with. And everything I hear about this from my single friends is not very encouraging and this is one of those problems AI cannot solve. (But that is a matter for a different commentary.)

For now, we can focus on this low-hanging fruit. If us parents work together and put our minds to it, maybe one day we can actually hear people talk positively about the prospect of having a child.

Let’s do it, let’s shut up for the country.