Women spurn baby-making bonuses, in-laws in Singapore enraged

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-21/singapore-turns-against-itself-as-pressure-for-babies-irks-women.html

As Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong tries to push for bigger families, his father’s “Stop at Two” campaign may come back to haunt him. Small families are happy, own more, have more to eat, and enjoy better health and education, posters from the 1970s extolled.

PM Lee is cranking up a national debate on babies this month, with proposals to Parliament that would attempt to stem the country’s slumping birthrate.

However Penelope Sim isn’t listening.

“My mother-in-law hates me and she says I’m selfish, but I don’t really care,” Sim, a human resources consultant who’s been married for six years, said as she shopped for MAC lipstick and eye liner. “Everything’s crazy expensive and life’s already stressful enough here without kids. If there’s no one to carry on the family name, then so be it.”

Sim, 33, embodies Lee’s challenge to convince Singaporeans to wed younger and procreate more.

Measures since 1987 to reverse declining fertility, including handouts of as much as S$18,000 ($14,600) and extended maternity leave, haven’t worked. The nation’s birthrate in 2010 and 2011 were the lowest in 47 years of independence. About 36,000 babies were born to residents in 2011, compared with nearly 50,000 in 1990.

The failure to encourage more births means the country will have to contend with a shrinking pool of workers and consumers, a deterrent to future investment. It will also increase the burden on younger employees to pay for an aging population. Lee has said higher taxes will be needed in the next two decades as the government boosts social spending to support the elderly.

Singapore resorted to immigration in recent years to raise numbers. The population has increased by 1.1 million in the past decade to 5.3 million. At the height of the influx, in the year through June 2008, the nation added 251,000 people.

“A lot of women in my generation feel torn between work and family,” said Farah Azmi, a 34-year-old accountant for a pharmaceutical company who married her boyfriend of four years in 2011. “I definitely want to have kids but I won’t be able to be there for them like my mum was there for me and my brothers. What’s the point of having kids if they’re going to be brought up by an outsider, by your maid?”

“I’m stopping at one,” said Corinne Chia, who is six months pregnant with a baby boy she plans to name Jeremy. She said the cost of bringing up a child is the main reason she doesn’t intend to have more. “He’s not even born yet and I joke to my friends that I’m already broke.”