I love being a parent but understand why my children may choose not to be

It has been more than two decades but I still remember the feeling when the nurses handed my firstborn to me for the first time.

Many a book, movie or well-meaning friend tells you that you will have these magical maternal feelings the moment you meet your child. But as I looked down at my baby, what went through my head was not: "Oh my, what an incredible feeling!" 

It was more like: "Oh boy. What have I done?"

There were many, many more such days over the next few years, which also saw us welcoming a second child. 

A sick baby draped across our chests; fighting the half-asleep, half-awake fog; dealing with forgotten books and teachers' notes; multiple trips to the doctor's; hand-wringing and heart-wrenching over grades. Moments that sound unremarkable on paper, but consumed us completely as we were living them.

And yet, here I am, saying – proudly and honestly – that motherhood is the best thing to have happened to me. 

I have never known a love so profound, a joy so intense, or a disappointment so deep. It made me a different person.

Admittedly, these days when young people tell me they'd rather spend their money on cars than have kids, I feel a pang of grief. 

But here's the thing: I do not blame them for seeing things this way. They inhabit a world so arduous – a world they had little part in building but must live in – that they have decided, quite reasonably in my view, that they don't want to bring a child into it.

In 2025, the total fertility rate in Singapore hit a new low at 0.87. On Feb 26, Ms Indranee Rajah, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office, announced yet another workgroup – this time, to figure out how to tackle this "existential" crisis.

I am not the first and certainly will not be the last person to say that money is a limited solution. Many others studying this problem point to core structural issues: the arms-race education system, the cost of living and the small flats. 

It sounds like these are disparate factors but in my mind, they are all interconnected on a much deeper systems level. This, in turn, feeds into the lived realities of young people, shaping their decisions.

LIVED REALITY NO 1: THE SYSTEM BREAKS YOU YOUNG

In Singapore, one in three young people reports anxiety, stress and depression. 

One child psychologist told me she has patients as young as five who exhibit perfectionist traits. The age band for reporting begins at 10. 

It's no coincidence that intense preparation for the dreaded Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) begins, for most children, at age 10 – from Primary 4 to Primary 5. 

Cortisol levels start to build up here, and from then on, every Singaporean knows the story: endless revision and enrichment classes, practice papers and poring over past mistakes.

Once the daunting hurdle of PSLE is cleared, what awaits is not rest but several more hurdles – N- or O-levels, then polytechnic or A-levels, then university (still seen as a necessary step for polytechnic graduates), then work.

Having had to supervise or mentor several young women as interns or trainees, I always made a point of asking them about their lives outside of work. 

Almost always, it quickly became clear that there was very little space for dating or the thought of settling down and having children. I used to playfully tell them that one of their key performance indicators (KPIs) was to go on dates.

But I've also noticed a more cynical thread to their reasoning: "We hated the stress of being in the system. We refuse to inflict this on another human." 

One young woman, bright and beautiful, told me she's sworn off the prospect of children because she looks at her younger cousins and how their parents pour in time and money to just keep them afloat, and she thinks: "Is this the life I want? A life of endless striving for my child, after a life of striving for myself?"

LIVED REALITY NO 2: THE COST OF OPTING OUT IS TOO HIGH

More than 20 years ago, I decided to step away from full-time work to focus on raising my two boys. 

I'll be honest: If I hadn't done so, I would have grown a much bigger nest egg and probably risen higher up in the ranks at work. 

Again, it's no coincidence that the people at the top in many workplaces are overwhelmingly either men whose wives shoulder the bulk of the childcare load or women who don't have children. In 2024, a report by global research firm MSCI showed that while more women are leading as chief executives in Asia Pacific's large and mid-cap companies, Singapore is bucking the trend, recording a drop in that metric from 13.6 per cent in 2022 to 12.5 per cent in 2023. 

My decision was in part driven by the fact that our family could maintain a decent standard of living on one income. 

Our home in a public housing estate was a four-room flat, which we bought in the early 2000s for, believe it or not, under S$200,000 (US$157,000). If my spouse had been unable to cover all our costs during those years, I would have chosen quite differently.

Today, even couples who could get by on one income are opting not to do so for the sake of raising kids.

And why would they? So many young men and women are talented and educated. Some are in their mid-20s and already in the top income bracket, something that took my generation a decade to achieve.

They worked their butts off getting there. Why give it up?

And even if they could, the corresponding drop in lifestyle would be too much to bear. Once you get accustomed to living a certain way, it's tough to voluntarily let go.

LIVED REALITY NO 3: PUNISHING WORK CULTURE 

We have accepted that in our hyper-competitive, growth-driven, money-focused society, sacrifices must be made.

Work-life balance is still, for the most part, a suggestion. Flexible work policies are encouraged, not mandated. Even if your company does have a flexible work policy, your boss probably sets the terms for what "flexible" truly looks like. 

By and large, if you want to be both a parent and a working adult in Singapore, it's practically a given that you need to hire or engage external help, max out your childcare leave, show up exhausted for the Zoom meeting and frantically fix that 25th edit on the PowerPoint presentation because someone more important than you has to present it to another very important person the next morning.

Not only have Gen X adults my age accepted it, but we have also spent years teaching and training the next generation to accept it, too. 

A young mother once told me she was very stressed about the impossibly high KPIs her department head had set. 

I did my best to talk the achievement-oriented Singaporean instinct out of her and encourage her to simply do her best at work and then switch off. At the end of the day, her children have only one mother – and no one dies when a KPI isn't met. 

But that can sound simplistic and easy to do when, in reality, you cannot switch off because your job demands it. 

So with limited freedom of choice over how much and how long they work, it makes sense that young people will want to exercise their control over the one choice they do have: Whether or not to add kids into an already fraught mix.

AND YET, ONE CAN STILL HOPE

As my boys navigate adulthood, I still hope they will eventually choose to have children of their own. Not because they may get free childcare, bigger baby bonuses or much more leave, although these will be important.

I hope they will choose children because bringing new life into the world is an extraordinary thing.

Parenting is very hard. But somehow (and maybe this is the famous "parent amnesia" talking), I find myself wishing I had more time with my boys when they were younger.

Because all my favourite memories reside there, in that space when they were innocent and utterly adorable. 

The beautiful days were the simplest days – baking cookies, playing in the sand, the sheer delight in their wide eyes when they saw a bathtub in a hotel room, the tight hugs and slobbery kisses.

I hope my children can experience this someday – this profound, irrational, exhausting, life-altering love. 

I hope they can want it for themselves. Choose it freely, without cynicism or dread. Experience how it can change them as people and give meaning to a life beyond being products of a successful system.

But I also know they may not. And if they don't, I can't blame them either. 

Their choice won't be caused by selfishness or apathy. It will be the entirely logical conclusion from having watched their parents and everyone around them grind themselves down to fit the mould of a "normal life".

Crispina Robert was formerly an executive editor at CNA. She is now the founder and host of the Type A podcast.

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