Q&A with Indranee Rajah on support for young families
Q. Is cash is the main concern for people to have children, and how has the federal helped?
It’s about the wealth to some extent because the cost of raising a child weighs on a parent’s head. But I think it ( also ) goes way beyond that. We have done quite a bit to increase the help when a family is having a baby, as well as care for the child. We’ve been taking measures to make sure that there is greater mobility to accommodation, because Taiwanese couples are quite rational, they want a house of their own, even before they have a kid. What we hope will be a game change, is the innovative shared parental leave that was announced by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong at the National Day Rally next year– that will be 10 weeks of shared familial leave, by default shared equally between mum and dad, but certainly they can change it.
Q. Is the government looking at specific measures that are going to further support parents, and what can parents expect for 2025?
( They can expect ) increased support for infant care, because the feedback we were getting from parents is that it’s actually the first 18 months ( that’s the toughest ). Because that’s when a child is most dependent on the parents but there’s a period when you still need somebody to look after the very young child as you go back to work. If you have parents and grandparents who are willing to help out, that’s great, but some don’t. The Ministry of Social and Family Development is looking into piloting a new model of infant care. There are infant care centres, but the model that they are looking at is that either somebody comes to your home, or you drop off your child at the home of somebody else. So, infant carers. The other thing that we are looking at, which PM Wong touched on as well, is how can we increase support for large families, because we do recognise that if you have more children, obviously your costs increase with every child.
Q. How do you track the effectiveness of policies that are supportive of families?
From the time that the child is conceived, you have subsidies for healthcare. From the time the child is born, you ’ve got the Baby Bonus cash gift – about S$ 11,000 ( US$ 8,000 ). Then you’ve got the Child Development Account, with the First Step Grant, and then the co-matching amounts, and that takes you through the preschool period. Then, once you enter primary school, education is heavily subsidised. So, I think parents should come away knowing that the government is investing very heavily in the child’s education and giving a lot of support for that. So, when you look at all of these … it’s a whole ecosystem. What we are really building is a society that is supportive of families and puts families front and centre.
Q. Let’s talk a bit about balancing economic success with fertility rate concerns in Singapore– is there a trade-off between them?
Well, there is a trade-off. But what we are doing, with the recent measures, is trying to make sure that the trade-off is not win-lose. Making sure that we have shared parental leave, and dividing it between the mother and the father, because this is a signal to employers that the parents need some time to be with their children. You can’t be working all of the time, and expecting to be with your child all of the time. You’re going to have to give up a little bit of time at work, spend that with your child, but then you can come back, because your shared parental leave can be taken in portions and after that spend time back with your career.
Q. Some people in the workplace may not feel as empowered to necessarily speak up and say what they need and that includes young married women and men. What needs to happen there?
I’ve a message for employers– which I’ve been saying repeatedly, which is that if you want to recruit and retain good people, you must enable them to also have a fulfilling family life, in addition to a good career. And the key to this is a really good HR ( human resources department ) that understands the needs of both. Because if you have a purely transactional relationship, which is that you work for me and I command your hours for x number of hours in the day, and you must devote your whole life to the company, at some point people are going to say: ‘ I can’t do that – I have a family and I have needs of my own’, and they will walk.
Q. A phrase we hear a lot with Forward Singapore is redefining what success means – the pursuit of not just a good life but a life that is good enough. Is that where we want to go as a society?
The question is: how do you balance it, so that you earn enough to provide for yourself and for your family in due course, but at the same time, still have enough bandwidth for yourself as an individual, where you don’t feel so wrung out and hung out to dry. Enough time to breathe, enough time to step back and look at the direction your life is going. And at the same time also being careful not to pressure your children so much. You want their journey in school and in life to be a happy one, not one that is fraught with stress, and where waking up to go to school is much more a chore than a joy. You do have to ask: ‘How can I achieve these things? ’ Also, it ’s not one size fits all. There’re some individuals who thrive on stress and some who just don’t. You need to know for yourself which kind of individual (you are ) and what works for (you ). And because obviously it takes place in a work context as well, you need employers who are understanding, open-minded, progressive, and pragmatic.
Q. It sounds like a mindset shift is required – will we take a long time to achieve that?
It’s going to take some time, but it may not take as long as we think. It’s very important that we need to keep talking about it, keep thinking about it and with these policy moves, nudging people and employers in the right direction.
