The intersectionality between the expansion of responsibilities in parenthood and fertility decisions in Singapore

• Main Author: Goh, Chrystal Jing Yi
• Other Authors: Premchand Dommaraju
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Social sciences::Sociology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/169182
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Fertility rates in Singapore have remained alarmingly low despite the government’s efforts to encourage young couples to start a family through a series of pro-natal policies. The dominant explanation of delaying parenthood is attributed to the postponement of marriage, high cost of raising children and competing life goals. Moreover, globally, the bar of what makes a good parent has been raised. Singapore’s highly competitive climate has contributed to an expansion in parental care labour where education constitutes a big part of childrearing responsibilities. However, in studying the factors that contribute to low fertility rates in Singapore, few researchers have considered the social circumstances of parenting today which includes the responsibility to ensure the academic successes of young children in social policy. This study thus employs semi-structured in-depth interviews with 5 married couples in Singapore to understand the various concerns they have regarding starting a family, the complexities of parenthood, and how it is like to parent in Singapore today. Findings from the study highlight how parenting responsibilities have gone beyond taking care of a child’s basic physical needs where the demands of parental care labour, in terms of financial costs and time, have gone up considerably due to children’s education. Such expansion of the responsibilities of parental duty have influenced married couples’ fertility decisions as raising children is an expensive, long-term commitment and pro-natal policies are not holistic enough to incentivise married couples to have (more) children.