Thank god my blog doesn't keep breaking down the way Quet's does.... although I have to admit, her new blog does look pretty damn cool.... NVM... wait for this one to get the hang of her webdesigning once n for all... hee.... :p

Anyway, anyone read my previous rant on the low birth rates in Singapore? Well, if you see today's Straits Times, there's a little graph there with a line that's shooting all the way to the bottom. Yes that's our birth rates. We need at least 50,000 births to sustain our country's needs, but last way, there were only 40,864 births. ( Wonder if there was something unauspicious about that way. Would explain it a bit. Our country planners could try asking the geomancers for advice instead )

And remember why I said this was the case? Cause everyone was subliminally conditioned into thinking about money first? The paper states that "The poor economy this year probably contributed to the drought, as couples tend to put off having chidren until they think they can afford to." and Ms Tan Yen Nee, 24, says: "We can't expect a decent standard of living with a child. We've got our housing loan and we're saving up for a car."

What this means is that this Ms Tan actually feels that having a decent standard of living, [whatever that may be to her. 5room? Maisonette? Condo?] and a car is currently higher on her family's priority list than having a child is. Could we infer from this also that her material needs come before her maternal ones?

Admittedly, I am utterly blur about Ms Tan's income and her husband's income and her reasons for not wanting a kid at this point of time. [in response to Kairos' comment, this is why I can't write into the forum, cos I'll get totally blasted to bits by other less open-minded souls.] But I really have to question if she's that poor that she can't even fulfil the 2nd level of Maslow's hierarchy. I also have to question what she means exactly by "decent". My parents, at the time that I was born, didn't even have a house of their own. And even after getting a house, they managed to sustain 2 kids at the same time, at a "decent" standard of living, meaning we had food to eat and clothes to wear and a car for Daddy to drive his ungrateful kids off to school.

Better economy then? Simpler way of life? I don't know. ANd the govt's measures aren't helping. Supposedly the gahmen has this entire basket of subsidies and rebates given out to families for their 2nd and 3rd child, so all these should help financially right?

Once again, nipping the symptom, but not the disease. If you look carefully at the stuff they offer, the bulk of the offers come in the form of cash, rebates, subsidies, with the exception being the extended maternity leave. Do they think that just by throwing money at us, we'd be immediately inspired to procreate? ( Hey honey, forget the Pill. Let's just do it and get the cash! )

Yoo-hoo, Mr Gahmen, if we have all those kids you want us to have, how'd you like to take care of them for us? Here's a great plan: You can keep the money, ( Which will only minimally sustain us for the first 6 years of the kid's life, and hereby saving them from paying for the time in the kid's life which gets really expensive ) and take care of our kids for us instead! Open up the Istana every Mon - Fri from 7am to 7pm and turn it into a giant nursery house! With all that space, I'm sure you have enough room for at least 40,000 babies and toddlers. And with the national guards, we sure don't have to worry about security now, do we? Maybe if we did that, you'd have a slight inkling of just what a DAMN HECK OF A TROUBLE it is to raise a kid!

And all that's just when they are toddlers! What happens when they go to Pri Sch? Meet other kids? Meet bullies? Get picked on? Can't do their homework? Can't understand Chinese? Need tutors, cos we, their parents, don't get Chinese as well? Go to Sec Sch? The Os? Get into JC? Meet members of the opposite sex in a co-ed environment ( some, for the first time ) at the most hormonally charged stage of their lives? The As? Uni? Graduation? All this is a freakin' 20-odd year process, of which the gahmen is only helping for the first 6 and then you're on your own! Good luck and try not to trip on the way to nursery school!

Whoever's in charge of this birth rate problem, pls come up with some new measures that'll actually help. We need our CPF. We need shorter work weeks. We need longer maternity. We need more family-friendly measures in the work place. We need bosses that don't see us as asset machinery that lives to work for the corporation alone. And we can't have all this, until you make the right moves in the right direction. If all you can think of is the monetary side, then that's all we, the citizens, are gonna focus on. And we're just gonna end up paying ( No pun intended ) for all this while you sit in your pretty little house with the damn huge golf course and wonder why we're not having more babies.

If you haven't seen the article, [or don't subscribe to Straits Times, hint hint wink wink tsk tsk], here is the link:
Singapore Sees Lowest Birth Rate in 26 years