Children? Costs? Carrots? A view from C-level

It's neither the costs nor the extrinsic carrots that make people consider whether to have kids or not. Costs are no object if you love your kids. If you have to be rewarded for having them, perhaps you aren't having them for the right reasons.

Above all else, when we become parents, we want to be the best possible parents to our kids. This means we want to provide the best possible chance of survival to our kids, and assure ourselves that our kids can grow up and live long and happy lives.

At our current level of social development, we tend to concentrate our available resources on raising one kid, or at the most two, for replacement sake. The fewer the number of kids sharing resources, the more likely the chance of survival. But that's literally putting all our genetic eggs into one (or two) baskets. The game we are playing is a gamble and the stakes are really high at the level we are playing.

The stakes are raised even higher when resources alone are not enough to secure assurance for the lives of our egg-baskets. We have artificially inflated the stakes even higher by pegging our kids' happiness and survival on personal achievement, evidenced by quality certification and documentation. Nothing less will do. Not for us, not for our kids, and certainly not for society whom we feel is beholden to us to help raise our kids, though how we arrived at this delusion is a mystery.

In a social structure like this, parental love becomes conditional. Parents love their kids when they score straight As, or their love is withheld until they do. Kids who need constant parental love are often made to feel they have to deserve it. Acceptance is gained by having to prove oneself again, and again, and again. Thus, within the household, relationships are strained all round. Given a choice, who would want to live like that?

The stakes aren't so high if you raise pets, though. General maintenance; medical expenses; treats; toys and the like are not cheap, but we spend without thought because we love our pets. Granted, they don't cost as much as raising kids, but that only makes things worse, doesn't it? The dog failed basic obedience; is probably as emo-psycho as any teenager and probably has a few undiagnosed learning disabilities as well, but hey, what the heck, right? Her future isn't dependent on stellar academic records, so we still love her just the same. She's done nothing to make us proud of her, but we still do our best to make her happy, anyway.

If we want more kids (the human kind), we have to make the C grade respectable again. My educational influences taught me that C stands for 'Competent', and that was good enough a benchmark to aim for. Achieving a C does not require kids to work unusually hard nor feel as unhealthily pressured, scared and hopeless as many kids are experiencing now. Aiming at a C allows a kid to develop interests, learn from other less academic sources and become more well-rounded as a person. By having time and space to see the world in all its horrors and wonders, a kid acquires broader perspectives and whatever knowledge is picked up in school falls into a useful context that helps make sense of the often weird and confusing things that happen around us all the time... if only we would look up from our books once in a while, busy as we are chasing an ultimately unappreciated bunch of As

But in our current society, encouraging your kid to aim for a C is the height of irresponsibility when all the other parents are making their kids score As by any means possible. This is not a game any rational person would want to play. And S'poreans are nothing if not rational.

Greater plans are afoot

While the Population White Paper announcing plans to cater to a 6.9 million population by 2030 has riled heartland sentiments, there is one other Masterplan that is slowly but surely being realized, but remains undisclosed for the moment. This unannounced Masterplan will kick in if the vast majority of S'poreans are so adamant against population growth that the proposed population projection becomes politically unpalatable.

What Masterplan? Haven't you noticed all the extensions to the MRT lines that are coincidentally going to continue all the way to 2030? All that tunneling going on under our feet is designed to undermine our bedrock foundations so much that at a push of a button, a small chain of explosions will detach the island from the Asian continent altogether. Prevailing winds and ocean currents will then shift us entirely into the Pacific Ocean where at a precise location that is equidistant from any major landfall, we will anchor and live our lives happily away from the rest of the world.

Our island is so small that no one would bother to visit us all the way out there. We have nothing to offer them, anyway, apart from maybe our heavenly chilli crabs -- if we could gather a decent enough harvest from the ocean bottom. Likewise, we could all subsist reasonably long and healthily, feasting on all the vegetables we can grow in our hydroponic rooftop farms.

No pressure of competition, we can all put up our feet and relax while watching the sun set over the horizon, once we're done tending to our veggie crops in the morning. The kids can play all day, though they might occasionally have to help out carrying seed bags and take turns running on the hamster-wheel powering the desalination plant that provides us with fresh drinking water every day.

Life couldn't be more idyllic. No one would miss us and while the rest of the world can rain nuclear apocalypse upon themselves, we'll be safe in the middle of the ocean. If we play our cards right, when all is said and done, we could be the only remaining survivors left on planet Earth. When that happens, we would have achieved World Conquest -- thus finally fulfilling our National Aspiration to be the only people on the planet that matter! *waves S'pore flag enthusiastically while National Anthem plays rousingly in the background*

Remember, patriotic S'poreans say 'NO!' to 6.9 million population.

Secret Masterplan proposed by Global Domination White Paper.

How to have more kids

Nope. The Population Dept has got it wrong again. Throwing more money at the problem of a shrinking population, and now endorsing paternity leave as well won't lead to more babies... though it might lead to even less.

It has always been a resource problem. We've always thought of money as being the resource that we lack, but that's not it at all. The scarcity is not in the money but in the children themselves. In truth, there are a lot fewer children than there is money to spread around.

Couples today aim to stop at two, or one, or have none at all. In fact, what is happening is that we are artificially restricting the supply of children. Because children are scarce, they come at a premium. Suddenly the price of having children has skyrocketed. Now we can never save up enough to send our sole little precious to school and see him (or her) grow up with all the luxuries his or her little heart desires. And for some of us, we feel WE don't deserve even one child because we'll never be able to work hard enough to ensure that our child will grow up to live the life HE or SHE deserves.

As my kids in discussion shockingly observed: in the past, respect went to the eldest in the family and trickled down through the hierarchy. However, these days, mommy and daddy have become slaves to their kids. Is it any wonder that we have little desire to serve yet another Pharaoh in our household? We're already slaves to our jobs in the morning and when we do manage to escape home we need a break. Oh, wait, Junior's there. Damn. I'd rather stay at work. At least my boss looks like a boss. Please don't make me take paternity leave! I'm serious!

If we really want to encourage our people to have more kids, we need a mindset change for couples to start having kids indiscriminately. Every household norm should have seven or eight kids whom we can then view as disposable commodities. Multiple redundancy drops the value per kid to near zero. If one kid screws up or dies or something, there's always another to replace the faulty product.

Economies of scale would mean that they all share the same toy, clothes, food, and they don't even have to go to the best schools. That's because whether they study and be educated or not, it's their lives and not my problem. Out of the many, all I need is one good kid -- if I'm so lucky -- and the rest, well, good luck to them. If I work hard, the money goes to me. Conversely, if you don't work hard, don't come crying to me for a handout. The next population campaign should go: Kids aren't precious -- have as many as you like!

When we live in the First World, it's easy to overlook the simplest of solutions which our Third World neighbours are so much wiser to.

Return of the baby

News that I have become a great-uncle once again should put the Senior Lee's fears to rest. This whole baby dearth thing is probably a phenomenon relating specifically to my generation born during the tumultuous years between the 60s and 70s. People blame the population policies of the period and while there is truth in that perception, the greater truth is that people are more flexible than just blindly complying with a non-compulsory governmental exhortation. My generation is the literally lost generation, at this age too old to reproduce and too tired to bother looking after babies. The generation after mine is better-adjusted, a lot more secure and forward-looking. I daresay the babies are coming back again.

Child-proof

Mankies = Married, no kids. That's us and a rising number of our compatriots who will not contribute to the gene pool, barring 'accident'. If you have to question why, just look at the people who ARE parents to see what parenting is like these days. Such people are absolute saints, taking pains to patiently wait in line all night to register their bawling newborn on a waiting list to enroll in a 'good' kindergarten.

People like me can only gape in disbelief at such melodramatic displays of parental self-sacrifice for their offspring. But if that is what it takes to be a parent these days, it is painfully apparent that I am patently not fit to be a parent; and neither are my more rational fellow Mankies. Good luck with that, people who are parents!

Make them first!

S'poreans are not producing enough babies because, according to the DPM, we are waiting to achieve a 'perfect life' before we feel secure enough to make those adorable little copies of ourselves. His advice: make them first. Life will never be perfect anyway, so get on with it! This, of course, is hot on the heels of PM's recent national address in which the PM presented the same exhortation.

Look, I'm not against the making of babies. In fact, I'm all for making lots and lots of babies! It's a fantastic process, but what does one do with the end product? The responsibility of having to personally look after each one for 25 years of their natural lives is a more effective contraceptive than a rubber prophylactic soaked in a vat of industrial-strength spermicide.

Anyone want to discuss how we as a nation have become too responsible for own own good?

Saving the world

I wonder if there's any merit to this OSU study regarding the impact human populations have on the environment? It seems like a no-brainer, but if we accept that mass human activity is the primary cause of climate change, it should stand to reason that the human population has exceeded the planet's capacity to provide resources to sustain all of us.

Solution: reduce the number of people back to a more manageable level and the planet would be able to start healing itself again.

Of course, it would be rather impractical to just machine-gun down all the unnecessary people in the world. That would be an environmental disaster all by itself, 'cos, like how are we going to dispose of so many bodies responsibly? Burial on that scale is sure to cause further deforestation 'cos nobody wants a mass grave in their backyard; cremation is out of the question 'cos we're trying to reduce our carbon footprint, not create a whole new cloud of CO2 and soot to choke up our atmosphere any more than we have already.

So, fine, we have to let everyone who's alive right now continue to live, but have fewer babies. The study projects that "in the United States, the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environmentally sensitive practices people might employ their entire lives – things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs."

By this reasoning, I could defend my right to not have kids, live like a pig and still feel good that I'm saving the world, one carbon atom at a time. Yes.