Singapore’s fertility crisis: Could flexible & remote work be the answer?

Birthrates are falling, falling, falling, and without kids, well there is no future

One of what seems to be consistent is that if you increase work flexibility or remote work (without decreasing job security) , people want to have more kids, and this seems to be double validated in Singapore

As we RTOing all over the globe, we may be doing it at the expense of the future.

At what point do we address the fundamental flaw of “fixing” falling birthdates and also softening the blow of human-caused climate change?

Given current technological trends, it does not seem prudent to populate the planet with humans who are increasingly devalued economically and societally due to the automation of labour. In this context, I do feel like the problem of underpopulation might be somewhat exaggerated, at least from a more humanist point of view.

It’s almost like they’re all in denial of the real change needing to raise the birth rate and just keep getting one piece of it here or there.

Make it so you can afford to buy a house in 20 years max on minimum wage, make it so you only need to do exactly 8 hours max a day with a one hour break, with no overtime needed and no ridiculous travelling, just hire enough people locally or make it remote work (the piece that this article actually got).

Also ban all donations from companies to political parties or politicians, only individuals and limit that to a low amount anyone can afford so no one person can gain more political power than anyone else just because they have more wealth, also ban politicians from having any outside investments or businesses. They should be entirely reliant on the masses opinion of their policies with no other biases.

You’d do well to throw government subsidized childcare in there, also paternity and maternity leave extended long enough for parents to settle into their new lives.

May sound like I’m asking for a lot to some people, but who cares, that’s my price to have children. If it’s not satisfied then I won’t do it. End of. I’m sure a lot of others feel the same. I need to see society going in the right direction that’s best for us poor masses instead of the rich so I can have hope for the future and the future of any children I’d have.

Otherwise, screw that.

I don’t know enough about Singapore, but I expect the birth rate to drop significantly in the US. Uncertainty about the future, no hope for the future, the instability of work, our healthcare system, no time off, the way we look down on people who live with their parents, stagnant wages, lack of affordable housing, lack of social mobility, increasing income and wealth inequalities, etc are all contributing to our declining birth rate.

Birth rates declined after the great depression and great recession. I expect a massive birth rate decline should Trump follow through with mass deportations and tariffs. https://www.prb.org/resources/the-u-s-recession-and-the-birth-rate/

Perhaps not imprisoning people by only letting them work, work, work, eat, and sleep would be an idea?
No real bar or club scene there. No fun, to be precise.
The entire city is basically a huge mall with shops and restaurants.
It’s fucking boring there.

You know I was thinking. My grandparents had one breadwinner working 40 hours a week. Able to own a modest 1300sft home. Raised 3 kids. Didn’t own all the latest stuff but could afford stuff like phone and cable and going to the movies or a pizza. If my partner and I could both work 20 hours a week each and afford all that we would have had more kids. Instead we are pulling down 90 hours a week with 15 hours of commuting supporting a one kid who it feels like we don’t see enough already. We want to fix the demographic crisis and shrinking population we have to work less, be able to support our families still and still be able to afford housing and some entertainment. Kids are a choice for most of us, when you barely have time for one or two your not having more and we will never hit the replacement rate again until it’s fixed.

No, all evidence seems to support that it won’t.

There’s growing consensus that the declining birth rates aren’t actually related to any of the bogeyman and/or explanations by virtually any of the groups in any part of the political spectrum, but rather the fundamental fact that having and raising children is kind of awful.

It’s not due to lack of affordable childcare/healthcare/government support as the left-leaning progressives would have you believe, as the incredibly generous Scandinavian countries with vast resources and comprehensive welfare states see effectively identical birth rate trends.

It’s not due to a “breakdown of traditional values” as right-leaning conservatives would have you believe, as the many countries with strictly conservative marriage/gender structures and drastically limited access to labor markets for women see effectively identical birth rate trends.

It’s not due to a lack of faith in the future/economic security, as it’s been conclusively shown that the richer a society is and the more opportunities people individually feel that are available to them, the fewer children they’re likely to have.

It’s becoming apparent to the vast majority of the population that having any number of children will definitively and noticeably lead to significant reductions in every quantifiable measure we have of material success, comfort, physical health, and happiness, while the benefits of having children in a modern non-agrarian society basically boil down to “indescribable positive feelings that are impossible to quantify” which most non-parents understand as parents attempt to rationalize such an irrational decision.

Listen the “falling birth rates” is just BS. It’s a stabilization after the boomers. That’s it. 

People cannot afford kids. There is no additional community supports. There is housing affordability. The crunch of also having to care for Boomer parents. 

But who is most affect by the lower birth rate. Capitalists! 

This is a global issue. It’s work wide. It won’t change until more is put in place to make it desireable for people to have kids.