What family-friendly really means

The Government deserves a great deal of credit for its much-anticipated White Paper on Population that has initiated a frank conversation on Singapore’s future, and has shown how the dynamics of family life, the exigencies of the labour market, the built environment and national identity are inextricably linked.

At its core, it ponders how to solve the issue of falling birth rates and an ageing population. Given that this is a global problem, are there any lessons that Singapore could adapt from other countries, particularly in terms of how some advanced economies have sustained their birth rates?

There are adjustments to work and family life that, approached judiciously, could help alleviate the burden that Singapore is likely to face in the coming decades. Increased availability of childcare and part-time employment may offer some help.

To see why these things make a difference requires an understanding of the calculations surrounding fertility that couples or women make.

As women become more highly educated, their expectations about work and family life shift. In particular, they expect to put their training to use and be employed. The dual-income family has become the norm in many countries.

Women also typically expect and want to have families. However, when the demands of work and child rearing collide, birth rates are likely to fall as some couples decide to forego or limit the number of children they have.

CHILDCARE IMPACT

Industrialised countries with high birth rates of the native population tend to be those that have structured their economies to allow women to combine paid work with motherhood.

Childcare plays an important role in this. The American demographer Ronald Rindfuss at the University of North Carolina, using convincing evidence from Norway, has shown repeatedly that when high quality, affordable and work friendly childcare is available, not only is the age at which women have a first child lower, they also have more children over the course of a lifetime.

The effect is so strong that he and his colleagues estimate that the difference between no childcare or preschool and covering 60 per cent of the population is more than 0.5 children per woman. In fertility terms, that is a huge impact.

The White Paper notes that the Singapore Government is reviewing the pre-school sector to look at the options for affordable infant care and pre-school. It needs to ensure that there is follow-through on these measures and that the quality is high.

Unless parents are convinced that the options are of high quality, they are simply unwilling to leave their children with caregivers or centres even if the cost is low. Providing the quality may add significantly to the cost but the pay-off is potentially worth it.

NOT JUST WHEN KIDS ARE YOUNG

Labour market issues are trickier. Making work life more family-friendly requires dealing with family issues by going beyond things like break rooms for nursing mothers, floating personal days or even cash bonuses for babies — as important as those may be.

It means thinking about work life balance from a life course as well as systemic point of view.

From a life-course perspective, many women are concerned with how combining work and motherhood will affect their career prospects over their lifetimes, not just a snapshot at the point when they happen to have small children.

For women who have been trained and encouraged to think of work as a career and part of their identity (and with the expectation that two-thirds of Singaporeans will hold professional and managerial jobs by 2030, that describes many of the women of this country), the idea that motherhood will derail would mean a lot more will decide that the cost of a child is not worth it.

THE MOMMY RUT

A solution countries like Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands have evolved is that a good deal of part-time work is disproportionately taken up by women, especially those with young children.

For many women, maintaining this kind of attachment to the labour force, while their children are small, but then transitioning back to full-time employment is important.

This is particularly true when it means that they continue to have opportunities for advancement and career progression across their professional lives and not get stuck on the “mommy-track”.

Would that work in Singapore? The White Paper notes that the Ministry of Manpower is considering ways to incentivise employers to implement flexible work schedules. This should be a top priority for any task force but it requires a rethinking of work.

In a country where, according to surveys, almost 90 per cent of employees report working longer hours than their jobs specify, a shift to part-time workers will be a tough transition.

In addition, much of the female employment in northern European welfare states with higher birth rates is in the public sector.

That is a solution unlikely to appeal to Singaporeans who are justly proud of their streamlined government and low-tax state.

Thus, it will be up to the private sector to make the bulk of the adjustments.

DOUBLE PAY-OFF

Still, finding the right set of incentives to enable women (and men) to combine parenthood with fulfilling employment over a lifetime is likely to generate important pay-offs.

Unlike other advanced countries where women’s labour force participation does not change dramatically after they have children — or it falls but then recovers once children become more independent — in Singapore, women’s participation peak quite early and once out of the labour force, women are less likely to return.

By harnessing women’s potential labour and finding ways to remove the impediments that keep them out of the labour force, if they choose to be mothers, there is the potential not only to increase the birth rate, but to lower the need for greater immigration.

Trisha Craig is Executive Director of Wheelock College Singapore and a former director of the centre for European studies at Harvard University.