I am a young Singaporean female, 23 years old. I have an Honours degree, and hope to continue on to at least a Masters at some point in the future. I am unmarried. I do not have a boyfriend, and neither am I in any particular hurry to get one.
At the 7th anniversary of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Mr Lee Kuan Yew was asked about Singapore’s low birth-rate, and whether he thought that the Stop At Two policy that began in the late 1960s had anything to do with it.
“Stopping at two has nothing to do with what’s happened. It’s happening throughout the developed world. Once you have women educated with equal job opportunities they do not see their future as bearers of children. So fertility rate has gone down, I don’t see it going back to 2.1, which is the replacement rate. The only way it can happen is if you ‘diseducate’ or ‘uneducate’ the women and that doesn’t make sense. The economy will suffer.”
- Mr Lee Kuan Yew
Whut.
Although I disagree with Mr Lee that the Stop At Two policy had nothing to do with Singapore’s dismal birth-rate, I do agree that many developed countries all over the world are seeing decreasing birth-rates and ageing populations, which suggests that the Stop At Two policy was not the sole factor in Singapore.
I feel like I'm in this era again, except the men aren't as well-dressed.
But to just move on and say that it is because of the women is just sexism, pure and simple. It’s not rational, sensible or pragmatic. It’s not even accurate, because it blatantly ignores a whole long list of other factors that affect people’s decisions to bear offspring, such as cost of living, change in lifestyles, lack of space, access to contraception and family planning programmes, etc. The high level of education – for both men and women, mind you – is only one factor in that long list.
Scarily enough, Mr Lee thinks that the only way to increase the birth-rate is to “diseducate” or “uneducate” women. As if dumbed-down females are all it takes; “oh, let’s stop giving these women knowledge and exposure to the outside world, and they’ll go right back to having lots and lots of babies for us!”
Luckily for us ladies, he goes on to dismiss the idea – but for all the wrong reasons. He dismisses the idea because “the economy will suffer”. Not because it’s regressive, not because it’s a breach of women’s rights to education, not because it’s just plain wrong. But because it’s not economically viable.
Where we belong? But I don't cook good!
Gee, thanks. That makes me feel so much better. I now know that I was born to either make babies, or make money. Majulah Singapura, eh?
It always seems to be about the women, that we’re too highly-educated and too demanding and too ambitious, which is why we don’t have boyfriends. Why doesn’t anyone talk about the men who don’t have girlfriends? Or wait, is that supposedly because the women are too highly-educated and too demanding and to ambitious to deign to be these men’s girlfriends?
We girls just can’t win. So here goes:
Dear Mr Lee (and everyone out there who subscribes to this same mindset), I am a young single Singaporean female. I have a womb, and a degree. They co-exist quite harmoniously, and I would like it to remain that way. I will have my children when I do. Until then, please leave my educated ovaries alone.
Time to Pack It Up
September 15, 2011
People have babies when they feel happy, safe and secure.
That is why we have post-war baby booms.
A Singaporean couple takes on huge financial risk if they decide to have children:
a)pregnant women risk losing their jobs
b)pregnancy health risks to the woman
c)if baby is not normal, there is very little social services to help parents and the child. God help you if extensive hospitalization of the newborn is required.
d)hiring a maid requires money. Maids may be dishonest or incompetent.
e)wife may have to stop working. Family is now on single income. Husband may lose job to foreign talents
f)Singapore schools are not adequate in covering syllabus. So tutors will be required for the child. Budget at least $1,000 per month
I’ll encourage other readers to add to this list.
Bottom line. Having babies in Singapore is a risky financial proposition.
Don’t expect any help from a PAP government if you run into financial troubles.
It is extremely reckless for LKY to encourage impressionable young couples to have children without also warning them of the financial risks they will encounter.
One of Lucky Tan’s article provides more details;
http://singaporemind.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-people-can-just-fall-into-policy.html
Jonas
September 15, 2011
I think, mon cheri, that having an Honours degree or a pass degree or a PhD has nothing to do with the issue. (It has everything to do with his twisted view of eugenics.) I frequently disagree with the pompous old todger, but he raises an important point here – that it is dangerous for women to have children after 35 because the chance of children born suffering from Down Syndrome is much higher. A bad analogy but nevertheless, men are not conscripted into the army when they are 40 because it seriously raises the possibility of snapping old bones.
Crystal
September 16, 2011
My mom had me at 22. She had a high school diploma. She has never made more than $28k a year USD (which puts her in the living paycheck to paycheck portion of the population). She will never own a home. When her car broke down 2 years ago, she was unable to afford a new one or the repairs on the old one (and has refused financial assistance from us). I grew up wearing off-label clothes, skipping field trips because I couldn’t afford the fees, and generally watched my mom struggle financially and in most areas of life.
This is not to say I had a horrid life. My mom is great, and she’s a wonderful mom (mostly). But I knew from a young age that the thing that could have made a huge difference in our lifestyle was if my mom had been educated and had the means to secure a better job that would pay more.
From a young age, I knew that college was my goal. I had my BA at 22. I received a masters at 24.
Unlike my mom, I had a good paying job (or at least a not entirely crappy paying job) as a public school teacher. I also had close to 6 figures of debt paying for that college education.
I dated, but I didn’t meet “Mr. Right” until I was 26. We got married when I was 2 months shy of my 28th birthday.
I miscarried my first child at 29, gave birth at 30 and am approximately 6-7 weeks away from giving birth again (aka a lifetime) at the age of 33.
We are financially stable. In theory we *could* have as many kids as we wanted to. We are making a conscious choice to stop at 2 (and were we not both only children ourselves, we most likely would have stopped with just Elanor, honestly).
Why?
1-We want to pay for college in full for our children. My husband graduated without debt (while mine will be paid when my eldest is either just graduated or going into her senior year of college) and it made a huge difference in his experiences getting started in the working world. Each college education is an additional financial burden.
2-We want to retire at a reasonable age and not stress or live on a ridiculously small budget.
3-The more kids we have, the harder it is to do the things we love, like travel. One child has not impacted our travel at all (She’ll be a United Executive Premiere before year’s end), and two doesn’t seem like that much more of a stretch. But seating configurations with 3 or 4 kids? The luggage involved? The number of hotel rooms necessary to house the full brood? The ease of transporting ourselves around?
4-The more kids we have, the more that impacts the size of housing we need.
5-The more kids, the larger our car needs to be.
6-The more kids you have, the less time you have for each child, your partner and yourself.
Apart from all of these considerations is the truth that I am a FAR better mother at 30-something than I would have been at 20-something. I have had time to pursue my own interests, to be ready to put my kids first, I have more patience, and I’m better equipped to find balance. I also know that while I have the patience and fortitude to mother 2 children, and I dont’ know that I am equipped to handle 3 or 4.
It is no one’s (including the government’s) to decide when it is appropriate (if at all) to have children, or how many.
thenakedlistener
September 16, 2011
Low-sperm-count f**ktards who shoot blanks alway blame in this way.
Like the first commenter (‘Time To Pack It Up’) said, people have babies when they feel happy and secure. We in Hong Kong have falling birthrates for years (since the 1970s) – and it’s exactly because of those factors recounted by Time To Pack It Up.
Sad State of Singapore
September 16, 2011
How many Mentor Ministers does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer:
One. But he is not going to change ( it ).
How many Prime Ministers does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer:
One. But Mentor Minister has just declared darkness to be the new standard.
How many Ministers does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer:
One. But it requires balls to climb up a ladder to change the light bulb
Kirsten
September 16, 2011
It is true that age is a factor in healthy pregnancies and children. However, that’s not even really his main point (not anymore, anyway). His main point appears to be that it is women’s fault that the birth-rate is so low, and that the only way to fix this is to dumb down women, except – oh noes! – this would affect our GDP. Essentially it’s like he’s saying, “If it didn’t hurt our money-making abilities we would totally stop educating women so they can go back to being baby-making machines.”
Malika
September 16, 2011
Don’t think he is being sexist. It is just a fact that as women start getting increased access to education, they usually tend to be less dependent financially on their husbands/men and consequently are more independent in many ways, including when/if they want to have babies (and how many they want to have). Lee Kwan Yu is just using this assumption to make the argument that increasing the ratio of the elderly to young will require women to lose this independence and increased equality with men, which if you look at many developing countries makes a lot of sense. “When you educate a man you educate an individual when you educate a woman you educate a whole family”
Kirsten
September 16, 2011
It is true that this is one of the factors but he somehow manages to exclude everything else (including measures that the PAP can affect, such as cost of living, etc.) and places the blame squarely on the women, portraying this as the SOLE reason and saying that the ONLY way of fixing this is if the women don’t get educated.
Ex0rcist
September 17, 2011
I think you’re taking it too seriously over here, just cause he’s LKY. Remember the PHD male student who came up shortly after the female student? He proclaimed his marital status just before directing his questions to LKY, much to the crowd’s laughter. That goes to show that the males themselves are “equally guility” of contributing to the falling birth rate and the crowd agrees with him. The audience was not taking LKY’s comments too seriously neither as an offensive sexist statement like you’ve said.
The quotation from you was right, but you fail to take into consideration the general consensus of the audience and the manner it was said in.
Riddle Me This
September 17, 2011
How many Presidents does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer:
We don’t know. And HE isn’t going to tell us.
How many Emeritus Senior Ministers does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer:
One. But he uses only foreign light bulbs. So he will have to fix the local light bulb socket first. To make it easier for the foreign light bulb to fit in.
Kirsten
September 17, 2011
Actually, the quote I refer to in this blog post was not from the NTU dialogue session, but the 7th anniversary of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy where he spoke about the Stop At Two policy in relation to our low birth rate.
bookjunkie
September 17, 2011
Just a slightly different perspective. Our authority figures totally overlook the fact that it’s a joint decision. Women don’t make babies alone.
Have they ever considered that in many of the cases, it’s the men who may not want to have babies. Men who prefer to travel the world with their spouse and have a different lifestyle option. Men who want to be financially stable before their have kids.
I have friends who did not have babies, because it’s a joint decision. One couple, after a decade of marriage has the male partner decide that now would be a good time to have kids as they were more financially stable. The female partner always wanted kids but she was just happy then, that he came around.
So it’s unfair to pin it all on the woman. It’s just a very personal decision and it’s rude for the government or anyone to question them.
I think it has more to do with the kind of environment we live in (cost of living/stresses) than women’s educational levels. Leave women’s education out of it (it’s just sexist). What about men’s education levels? It also means you’re totally disregarding the men in the decision process.
Jonas
September 17, 2011
You’re right. I’m hopelessly stuck with his comments made at NTU last week. I have to disagree with his conclusion. The government could sponsor a career fair for surrogate mothers, so that we will not have to dumb down our Singapore women. We have a maid for the housework, don’t we?
kierstenS
September 17, 2011
Amen, sister friends!
Amirah
September 17, 2011
Brilliant, great read. Thanks for this!
Kirsten
September 18, 2011
Another thing that puts me off is how he seems to assume that the decision whether to have kids or not lies solely with the woman. Do the men get no say in this? Does he assume that all men by default want kids, and it’s just the women who are not obliging?
Kirsten
September 18, 2011
Agreed!
pensive
September 18, 2011
Are we making a big deal out of nothing? LKY is simply pointing out an absurd scenario. He did say diseducating women didn’t make sense!
Rowan
September 18, 2011
As much as generally I agree with your point of view, I feel as though LKY has been misqouted. He didn’t actually offer the idea of diseducating women. He just merely noted that the status quo stands that women have better things to do that have babies and that settling down with a can wait.
Note that the next sentence after “the economy will suffer” (as a result of the “dumb women” and the low population growth) is “Migration is the solution” – thats the solution he offers. That’s the real issue of the article.
So have your babies when you want. I don’t thing the government is applying pressure on us to procreate at a younger age… fact is it doesn’t make that much of a difference if we have our children at our late twenties or late thirties. Its just the fourties that are a problem – but hey… thats why fertility treatments are subsidized.
Maybe its the male fish in the pond who are the problem.
Kudos for your feminism – from a fellow feminist.
Rowan aka Ronster the Monster.
Seriously
September 18, 2011
No. I don’t think we are making a big deal over nothing.
The reason we pay multi-million dollar salaries and pensions to our civil servants and politicians is to ensure that we have serious people leading our country.
Are you saying that LKY is talking rubbish?
Consider
September 20, 2011
Research has shown that countries where there is MORE gender equality, especially in the home, birth rates have reversed the downward trend and gone up. Eg. elecpress.monash.edu.au/pnp/free/pnpv8n2/v8n2_2mcdonald.pdf
In any case, continued population growth is not sustainable. http://www.populationpress.org/publication/2003-4-browne.html and http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=8321
Kirsten
September 20, 2011
Actually the quote was lifted directly from the video, and he did mention the idea of diseducating women. Fortunately for us he dismissed it in the next sentence, but for all the wrong reasons (because it would affect the economy!)
I don’t think the government is actually forcing us to make babies – thank goodness! – but it just feeds into the national psyche when comments such as this are made, implying that the women are the source of the problem.
whatsaysyou
September 30, 2011
Kirsten, great post. I am in my late twenties, single and my educated ovaries and my qualifications co-exist together in harmony too. Although some people are asking me to settle down, I don’t give a toss about it because I will have kids when I am totally ready and I love being single for now.
OJ Tibi
October 7, 2011
Thanks for the article, Kirsten. Interestingly, the polar opposite is happening here in the Philippines, just because the church imposes their teaching, mis-educating our citizens. I just hope that most of the people in our country would have the same thoughts as you do, and someday be as progressive as Singapore.
Kirsten
October 10, 2011
I was actually just in the Philippines, and was so surprised to see stickers and posters and banners proclaiming “SAY NO TO RH BILL!” I mean, I know that there is religious opposition, but somehow I didn’t expect such vocal opposition to what is in my mind a vital and much-needed bill.
Evaporate
December 6, 2011
I’m agree the concept of “over-educated woman is not the only contribution to low birth rate”.
However, it does start the ball rolling to the rest of the above mention causes to low fertility. When women have equal opportunities with man, they compete for jobs. When that happens, it is understood that man loses job opportunities. If you were to do a survey, it is highly likely that women will start a family with someone with inferior financial capability. Which means that you have this pool of educated & uneducated women going for the same of highly successful men. If you visualize it, it’s like women takes away 50% of the jobs in the market & they are most unlikely to not date the men they took the jobs away from.
High cost of living is due to market forces, market forces is affected by decision made by the power, the power is driven by profits, more profits will eventually transform to greed. When the income gap widen, everybody wants to climb up the ladder. The ladies wanna be on the passenger seat of a Benz. They want a unit on the top floor of The Sail. They’re not gonna have time to think about babies with the low lives, the low lives are struggling to survive in this ‘Dog Eat Dog’ society. In the next 20 years, if you not born well off, you can stop thinking about your future. Because there ain’t any. People today as young as in their 20s would be driving the beemers, the Benz, the Posche; not because they can but because their family has. Women can fight for equal opportunities but the truth is, human will never have equal opportunities base on today societies.
It’s too late. We’re all @#$ke%!
Evaporate
December 6, 2011
Sorry. some typo mistakes.
-If you were to do a survey, it is highly UNLIKELY that women will start a family with someone
with inferior financial capability.
-If you visualize it, it’s like women takes away 50% of the jobs in the market & they are most LIKELY to NOT date the men they took the jobs away from.