I'm not surprised that Singapore's fertility rate has hit a new low of 1.16. I have already said as much in Feb last year in this post here. There is no way that you can increase productivity and fertility at the same time. They contradict each other.
The key to a healthy family environment is always your family. Does it help that both the husband and wife have to work late hours and sometimes even over weekends, stuck in the drive for the "increased productivity" that is forced upon them? How often do you see cases where you are put in the situation where budget is cut, but yet you're expected to deliver more? How will this "increase productivity" affect your child? Will your child even treat you as family since you are perpetually at work and they see others more than you?
Most of us are out at work for more than 12 hours every working day. How are we going to squeeze in our personal time, let alone family time? Unlike how bosses or people up there count working hours, my working day starts from the time I step out of the house and ends at the time I am at home. Simple reason is because my personal and family time begins at home. To top it up, we have the added stress that we bring back from work where the management promises certain KPIs that need to be met, but leave it to the lower rank people to figure out how it can be done with lesser resources. How many of us work when we are at home? The dreaded Blackberry anyone?
For those who takes public transport, I'm sure some of you have encountered the same situation as me. During a certain period in the morning, it does not matter whether you leave the house 15 mins earlier or 15 mins later because you will end up reaching your destination roughly around the same time. Why is this so? Try changing from LRT, to MRT, and to Bus and you will understand the reason why some people take so long to get from point A to point B. The concept of the transport operators peak hours are also out of this world. Again, don't look at the numbers by the transport operators. Just look at what happens every day during peak hours. It speaks for itself.
Some people will of course recommend to get a maid to do your housework to free up your time. My answer to you is that if you realise what some maids do when no one is looking, you will think again. You can try and observe the surroundings when you're outside. It's quite common to see maids talking on their handphones, and a poor child (or pet for that matter) either being dragged across the road by the maid, or the child is running around getting into dangerous situations without the maid even paying attention. It doesn't help that I don't like strangers touching my belongings.
All this adds up to less or sometimes even no personal time for yourself and your family. For your information, personal time is not equal to housework.
Added stress and less/no personal time. How do babies fit into the picture? Right... It doesn't.
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