How is it the end of February already?! My work crunch-time (due to Mekong Review's publishing schedule) is rolling 'round again so soon… Maybe this means I should read even more novels and fanfic now, before everything gets hectic again 😈
Also, from March onwards, you can use your SG Culture Pass credits to buy SingLit! Sadly, my book is not eligible ☹️ Oh well… I'm still probably going to end up dropping all my credits in Book Bar.
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Here we are back on an old, long-standing issue: babies. We need more of them. Preliminary figures suggest that the resident total fertility rate (TFR) for 2025 was at an all-time low of 0.87. In response, the government is setting up a work group to look into marriage and parenthood issues. This group will be chaired by Indranee Rajah, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister for Finance and National Development.
Speaking in Parliament, Indranee acknowledged that marriage and parenthood is a "personal choice", but said that "we need a mindset change to encourage couples to consider a more balanced picture when exercising this choice".
I've seen scorn and criticism on Singapore over how this work group is being led by a single woman with no children. Which is both stupid and sexist. And also just lazy; there's so much that can be said on this than sniping at a woman's marital status and child-free state.
In her speech, Indranee argued for a "reset across society" on the way Singaporeans view marriage and parenthood, the alignment of work and family, and how "everyone can play their part". Apart from boosting existing schemes int he Marriage and Parenthood Package, the government wants to work with employers to "foster family-friendly workplaces" and, importantly, "cultivate positive mindsets towards marriage and parenthood".
None of this is new; we've heard this over and over and over again. The government has repeatedly brought up the TFR and talked about it as an "urgent" or "existential" issue, but has anything really changed?
I'm not a fan of framing the issue as a matter of people's "mindsets". Firstly, there will always be people—and perhaps a growing number of people, myself included—who just don't want to have children, and nothing the government does will make us change our minds. (This is not to say we hate children, a lot of my child-free friends love kids… we just don't need them to be our kids.)
Then there are people who do want kids but, for whatever reason, are hesitant or feel like they are unable to have offspring at this stage of their lives. The "mindset" framing makes it sound like an individual problem, like the only obstacle is their own anxiety. But often the things that hold people who want kids back are very valid, real concerns. Parenthood does have an impact on careers, especially for women. There are huge stressors placed on parents of children going through Singapore's education system, and at a time when the cost of living is rising but job security is shaky it's entirely understandable for people to be worried about whether they'll be able to provide the financial security and comfortable lifestyles they would like their children to enjoy. Rather than tell these people to change their mindset, we would be much better off rethinking (resetting?) the fundamentals of how Singapore works and the sort of society that we've built. We can't insist that we have to out-compete everyone and "eat their lunches" and put children a gruelling education system with high-stakes standardised testing and normalise working incredibly long hours and not want to provide more robust labour protections and constantly be vigilant against threats seemingly coming from all directions and face down a climate crisis and somehow still have enough confidence, time, and energy to pump out kids.
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This week's rage-bait: Chan Chun Sing, Coordinating Minister for Public Services and Minister for Defence, says that ministers must always exercise the broad discretionary powers they're granted by law within the bounds of the law. The Workers' Party's He Ting Ru had asked: "How does Singapore guide and monitor the use of executive discretion and what are the safeguards in place to ensure that these are done judiciously?"
In response, Chan said that the law "confers discretion on ministers and other officials so that they can exercise their judgment on how best to deal with each case based on the facts, instead of mechanically applying a rigid rule". Big decisions are referred to Cabinet for discussion before a decision is made, and the Cabinet is, in turn, responsible to Parliament. This, apparently, is supposed to be sufficient in terms of checks and balances. But how robust a check is this when the Cabinet and the overwhelming majority of Parliament come from the same political party? What about independent oversight? What about the role of the judiciary as a separate branch of power that's meant to be checking on the other branches? Where can citizens turn when we disagree with the ministers' judgment on how to exercise their powers, or believe that they're overstepping?
Got some more…
📚 We're in the middle of the Budget debates and Academia SG has got our backs. The Singapore Internet's 'Chers have put together a great reading list of pieces relevant to the Budget. I highly recommend taking a look!
🕸️ According to documents leaked on the dark web, 255 organisations linked to Singapore's critical information infrastructure were infiltrated in clandestine cyber operations. Yikes.
💡 Kevin Y.L. Tan argues that it's time to establish the Leader of the Opposition position in law. "The office and duties and responsibilities of an LO are too important to be left to convention, or worse still, the Prime Minister’s indulgence. Reform is needed and the time is now."
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