1st: Taiwan 1.07
2nd: South Korea 1.09
3rd: Singapore 1.15
4th: Macau 1.21
5th: Hong Kong 1.22
China is doing slightly better at 1.60 and Japan is at 1.38 but on the whole, this TFR in these countries are still way below the replacement ratio of 2.1 - this means that all of the women in these East Asian countries are having so few babies that the population in these countries are shrinking, fast. I don't want to turn this into a geography essay about the effects of a shrinking and ageing population but instead I want to point out the elephant in the room: the statistics tell us that East Asian people hate having children or at least are not keen on them. We really hate having babies so much that we would do anything to avoid having them, resulting in the world's lowest TFR. Thus when this reader talked about a "family centric Asian culture" that "encourages family life" - well the reality is that East Asian cultures are the least family centric in the world, I would say that family life is actively discouraged but at the very least, it would be fair to say that East Asian people have different priorities instead of focusing on having children. Now I have worked out that Naomi is a) female and b) living in Singapore, so I can make a calculated guess that she must have been under some pressure from her friends, family and colleagues to settle down, get married and start a family. But what is the reality on the ground in Taipei, Seoul and Singapore? How did the TFR in these countries end up so shockingly low? What do these figures tell us about the attitudes of families in these countries towards having children? To answer this, we need to go back a generation: all the way back to the 1970s to understand how these countries have evolved so much in only a generation.
The TFR in countries like Singapore weren't always so low: this is anecdotal evidence but my grandmother had seven children and my mother had three children. This was considered normal for their time but it is clear that with each subsequent generation, women were having fewer and fewer children. Back in the 1970s, the TFR was so shockingly high that the Singapore government took drastic measures to try to stop women from having more children. The "stop at two" campaign ran from 1972 to 1986 - this consisted of various disincentives for women who defied the government by having a third child, such as in the form of higher much hospital fees for their third (and subsequent) babies and the withdrawal of the right to maternity leave for mothers having their third (and subsequent) babies. Couples were also punished through the public housing and income tax system; there was a lot of education campaigns to persuade parents to listen to the government's advice when it came to family planning. The Singaporean model of population planning wasn't as harsh and strict as China's one child policy, but the government was extremely determined to stop people like my parents from having too many children and it worked. In fact, it worked so well that they had to do a complete U-turn and encourage Singaporean families to have more children from 1987 as the TFR has fallen way below the replacement level. Since then their pleas to Singaporeans to have more babies have fallen on deaf ears as TFR is at a historic low and it is still falling today. What does this reveal about the attitude of Singaporeans towards having babies?
You would think that my PAP-voting parents would obediently listen to the government on this issue but actually no, they defied the government and had to pay a high price for having a third child. They were torn between being model citizens following the government's rules and their Chinese cultural traditions of wanting a son - I have two older sisters so they decided to keep going until they had a son regardless of the price they had to pay for it. Likewise, amongst my two siblings and I, my second sister has just one son and that's it - so we went from my grandmother having 7 children, to my mother having 3, down to an average of 0.5 between my two sisters. Are my sisters under pressure from both the government and their parents to have more babies? Of course, but in the same way that my parents defied the government back in the 1970s and still had a third child, but two sisters pretty much just ignored what everyone is telling them and did what they wanted to do when it came to the issue of having children (or not). But let's look a little more closely at the dynamics here: imagine my mother nagging at my sisters to have babies. My elderly mother is no longer fertile, she has had her menopause, her reproductive system has shut down for good. The question is then whether or not she has any influence over my sisters' decisions when it comes to the matter of having children: my mother has no influence but that still doesn't shut her up and she will still keep on nagging regardless (so my sisters will just ignore her).
It is important that women have the right to decide for themselves how many children they want to have - after all, a woman who has babies to please her parents still has to take care of all of those children most of the time, the grandparents can only do so much to help at the end of the day. There is a window of fertility for women in a country like Singapore; typically women will get married and start a family when they are financially able to provide for the baby. That means that even if a woman gets married in her early 20s, the financial situation of that young couple probably isn't conducive for a baby just yet - that's why they would till their mid-to-late 20s before even considering having a baby. However, most women would rather have their babies before they turn 40 as the chances of a natural pregnancy drops with age and women over 40 may need fertility treatments in order to get pregnant and by the age of 45, it is nearly impossible for a woman to get pregnant naturally. This leaves the women with a fertility window starting from their mid-to-late 20s for about only 10 to 15 years to have babies. It is really the women who happen to be in this 'fertility window' who determines what the TFR is - the government and the older generation can try all they can to influence this cohort of women but how much influence do they really have? This situation potentially puts them at odds with the government (who are worried about a shrinking and ageing population) and their parents (who desperately want grandchildren). So these women have a choice: would they try to please others like their parents or do they choose what they prefer to do?
It is clear that my mother has failed to persuade my two sisters to have more children because she has so little influence over my sisters. With all due respect, my two sisters are highly educated whilst my mother is completely uneducated so whilst we feel the need to take care of our mother and protect her from her own stupidity, we do not ever turn to her for advice and when she tries to offer some, we nod and smile then totally ignore her knowing that she is spouting complete garbage. We don't go as far as to insult her by telling her that she is stupid, no that would be cruel - no we simply let her speak then ignore whatever bullshit she spouts. So if she says, "when are you going to get married and have some children?" Well, we smile, nod and say nothing - knowing that we have absolutely zero intention of ever listening to anything she has to say on the matter (or any other issue). This generation is a lot more educated than my parents' generation, so we're far more likely to turn to Google to get our answers than try to get any kind of advice from our parents. It is in this context that countries like Singapore have transitioned from one with a birth rate so shockingly high that the government tried hard to intervene to persuade women to have less babies to one where the TFR is amongst the lowest in the world - all this within just one generation. So not only is there a huge difference in the attitude towards this issue of having babies between the generations, we can also tell that the older generation has much less influence on the current generation of women who are in the fertility window - that's just how quickly our society is changing. Would you unconditionally and blindly obey your parents, if they are completely uneducated and give you really terrible advice?
Is it simplistic therefore to say that the older generation want young people to have loads of babies but young adults these days have little desire to do so? Well, that does sum up the situation. Our society is changing from one where women used to have a lot of children to one where women have very few or no children at all. Whilst this transition from high to low TFR has happened in many countries across the developed world, what makes countries like Singapore and Taiwan unique in this aspect is that this this fall in TFR fell far more drastically over a much shorter period of time when compared to places like France, Australia or the USA. So whilst older Singaporeans like my elderly parents may still embrace this concept of "family centric Asian culture", it is clear from the TFR that the younger generation of Singaporeans have said no to it by flatly refusing to have more babies. Furthermore, our culture is alive - it grows, evolves and changes over time: it isn't fixed in stone like some kind of antique Chinese stone urn in a museum. Chinese culture isn't about going just to the museum and looking at old vases, tapestries and paintings from the Ming dynasty - those museum exhibits will tell you something about the culture of China from that particular period of history, but what about modern Chinese culture in 2021? Chinese creators are using modern technology to create new content on the internet everyday, take the Chinese live streaming platforms for example - that only became really popular in 2015 and it is such an important part of youth culture in China today. If Chinese entertainment can evolve so quickly as a result of technology, Chinese/Asian values have also evolved as well because of the impact of these big changes in our lifestyles.
You may ask me, "this is just Chinese people adopting new technology - can it really change the culture that much? Would our Chinese culture change that much if a family starts using a rice cooker instead of cooking rice the traditional way?" Okay, so let's look at the impact of the humble rice cooker - it is a useful, time-saving modern kitchen appliance that has saved the Chinese woman a lot of time. In the past, without her modern kitchen appliances from the freezer to the microwave to the electric kettle to the blender to the rice cooker, making meals for her family was such a slow, time-consuming task that many women thought they had no choice but to become housewives in order to take care of their families. However, modern households now have everything from washing machines to vacuum cleaners to Nespresso machines - this automation makes housekeeping a lot easier for the modern woman, giving her the liberty to continue working as a mother. As a breadwinner also contributing to the family, her status in the family has changed drastically, fundamentally changing the dynamics as she has transformed from being a housewife completely dependent on her husband to an independent woman who is on equal footing with her husband financially. Okay, so it isn't just the rice cooker that can take credit for liberating modern Chinese women, but it is the cumulative effect of all of these modern household appliances. In fact, my sister takes it one step further - not only does she have all of those modern gadgets in her home, she also has a maid so it is the maid who takes care of all the housework whilst my sister still holds a very senior position in her company. It is clear that our cultural values have changed so much in just one generation and thank goodness for that: it is a change for the better because this helped improve the status of women in East Asian societies.
So why have birth rates plummeted so much in East Asia then? The reasons are simple: our priorities have changed. In my parents' generation, families were much bigger as that was the norm back then but in the 1980s and 1990s, younger adults preferred the idea of smaller families - having another child is expensive so they drastically reduced the number of children they had in order to make sure the only child could have the best of everything. Don't forget, we have a culture which places so much emphasis on academic achievement and not every parent has a child who is born a genius: the modern education system is painfully expensive as well and there is a massive private sector involved in education despite the fact that these children are already going to school. Another factor is that the quality of the education at school in places like Singapore is terrible to say the least: the problem is that teaching is seen as a last resort when nothing else works out, so it rarely attracts the best talent into the profession. The result is a rather poor quality of education by unmotivated, incompetent teachers and parents will have to either try to teach their children themselves or hire private tutors. In short, these parents barely have enough time, money and resources to take care of the education needs of one child in Singapore today: having a second child will damage the first child's prospects because it would be dividing this very limited time, money and resources between two children. If the parents are earning a lot of money then this would not be a problem at all as they can hire plenty more tuition teachers for all their kids, but if your resources are finite then having only one child is a very rational decision. Any rational parent will want their child to have a bright future.
However, this wasn't always the case. A generation ago, people didn't care so much about the quality of the education they received. If a student had terrible teachers at school, then the parents will just shrug their shoulders and ignore the problem rather than try to intervene. After all, if all the parents reacted like that, then your child isn't any worse off since every child is receiving an equally terrible education - thus this leveled the playing field when parents collectively chose not to intervene. But in the last few decades, this has changed: if your child has a terrible teacher at school, then the parents will just step in and do something about the situation (often by turning to private tuition) - this is of course an expensive option and it has made education today extremely expensive compared to when I was a child. Furthermore, a young mother in Singapore who is 25 today would have been born in 1996 - she probably would have had some private tuition as part of her own education and thus she would likely expect that her child will have that advantage in the future, no matter how much that would cost. And of course, in order to earn enough money to provide for their children, these young parents will have to work harder, put in much longer hours in order to maximize their earnings but that again leaves them far less time as parents to take care of their child(ren) - I can imagine the young mother returning home from work thinking, "I'm so exhausted after a long day in the office but now I have to spend time helping my daughter with her homework - there's just no way I can have another child, even if I have the money, I simply don't have enough time or energy left because there are only 24 hours in a day. I honestly don't think I can be a good parent if I had more children."
But let's be clear about one thing: these parents are motivated by love. They genuinely want the very best for their children's education and all that costs money. So it is not that they hate babies per se, but this trend of having only one child is a product of the extremely high costs of bringing up a child today. A few years ago, I blogged about a Singaporean family with seven children and mind you, my grandmother had seven children, that was totally normal for her generation. But this family attracted a lot of harsh judgement from Singaporeans for a simple reason: the father earned very little and thus were barely able to make ends meet. The children barely had enough food to it and they were left with absolutely no money to invest in their children's education. Given that there were seven children, even if the parents wanted to try to play the part of the tuition teacher, they simply didn't have enough time to adequately help all seven children and thus their education suffered - this is compounded with the fact that their classmates at school probably all had private tuition or at least parents who had a lot more time to dedicate to their children because they were either the only child or had only one other sibling. The emphasis these days is not how many children you have, but whether you can provide an excellent childhood and education for your child. In just one generation, the focus has shifted radically from quantity to quality when it comes to having children. You can still be "family centric" in this context by caring enough about your only child to want to give him/her the very best start in life by investing heavily in his/her education - so a generation ago a Singaporean man who has seven children may be hailed as "family centric", but today he is seen as an irresponsible awful father because he is not providing adequately for all his children. Oh how times have changed.
There will undoubtedly be plenty of older Chinese people still alive today nagging at younger Chinese people to get married, settle down and have kids but it would be a mistake to imagine that they set the tone for what family values mean today. The most reliable measure in this case is the total fertility rate (TFR) and it is evident that your modern Chinese woman probably one wants one child (if any at all). Our societies have evolved so much in the last 50 years. When my parents were teenagers living in pre-independence Singapore, British Malaya was a very poor third world country and within their lifetime, it has become the third richest country in the world - would such a rapid change have some impact on our cultural values? Of course it would. In fact part of the reason why Singapore became so crazy rich was because we were so adaptable and willing to change our attitudes towards issue like education and how many children one should have. This is why so many other countries in the region like the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam have at best experienced modest economic growth compared to Singapore - they are still having way too many babies and thus not investing enough in the next generation's education. Singaporeans have figured this one out but really, it isn't rocket science to realize that the fewer children you have, the more money can be spent on each child's education, the better educated they will be and the better their prospects would be when they grow up. Based on the understanding of that simple logic, the TFR of so many East Asian countries have plummeted in a generation and that's a clear indication that our cultural norms of this issue of having children has shifted so significantly, in just the last few decades.
And finally, if I may clarify please: the Taiwanese woman who asked me that very personal question was in fact younger than me, so she isn't an older Chinese woman nagging at me but rather a younger Chinese woman who had poor social skills and had come up with a really inappropriate question. So you couldn't even try to use her age to try to justify her attitude towards the issue - women like her in Taiwan typically have either only one child or none at all. But if they do have one child, it's not because they hate babies or are not 'family centric' but they have made the strategic choice to focus all their energy, money and love on that one child to give that child the best possible start in life. Being 'family centric' doesn't strictly mean having loads of babies! I just watched a news report about migrants from Honduras trying to make it to America and there was this family who have nothing more than the clothes they are wearing, trying to walk to America and good grief: not only did they have two children, the mother is pregnant! Sure I get it, life is hard in Honduras and you're very poor but why are you having so many children when you are totally unable to provide for them? Couldn't you have waited till you're financially stable before having so many children? Their children are suffering so much now because of their parents' irresponsibility. Then there's a 17 year old boy who has absolutely nothing trying to walk to America but he's leaving behind a wife and son in Honduras and I'm like, what the hell are you doing fathering children at 17 when you're not in a position to provide for your family? Can't you wait till you have a decent job before you start fathering children? Would being 'family centric' mean bringing children into this world, only for them to starve and suffer?
So there you go, that's it from me on this topic. What do you think? What does it mean to be 'family centric' to you? Are people like me just anti-families by choosing not to have children or are we making very sensible decisions about our financial situation? How do you feel about these irresponsible parents who are wallowing in poverty yet they insist on having so many children, only for the children to starve and suffer through their childhood? Why do you think the birth rate has plummeted so drastically in places like Singapore, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan? Would you be prepared to ignore your parents if they ask you to have many children? Do leave a comment below please, many thanks for reading.
Do you think that total fertility rate is inversely correlated to social mobility? I'd say that the East Asian countries you listed probably have some of the best social mobility prospects in the world. But also, those east Asian countries have very low crime as well. Because we don't have many teenage pregnancies I would think there are less cases of "crimes of desperation." Also, in America the fertility rate may be 2.1, but white and asian couples have a fertility rate lower than that in the 1s. In fact white Americans are having less children such that most babies born in America today are to minority parents, despite white Americans still forming the majority of the country (71%). I think this is because whites and asians tend to be wealthier and have less children overall.
ReplyDeleteBtw I dunno how religion plays a part in East Asia. East Asia isn't particularly religious but we don't have a culture of casual sex here. But if someone does fall pregnant, there is no religious opposition to abortion. In the west people are more likely to engage in casual sex, and also to keep the baby. Like in the UK someone could unabashedly tell people they are a single mother, but in Sg that would invite a lot of shame. Growing up my parents made it clear I had to marry a guy and buy a house and car first before having a kid. My dad would scare with me this story of his Texan friend's daughter whose boyfriend got her pregnant in university so she had to drop out, marry him, and raise the baby. In the end they got divorced. In Asia no girl would drop out, even if they kept the baby the grandparents would help look after them so the girl could finish her studies.
Hello Amanda. Of course the correlation between TFR and social mobility is clear: if your resources are limited, then you have one child and invest heavily in that child's education. If you are poor and you have many children, then you're setting your kids up for failure - that's a cruel and irresponsible thing to do. Conversely, I know of this Russian guy who had 10 kids, that's right TEN children. But then again, I also know that he is crazy rich so I actually have far less problem with that - so whilst he can pay for his ten children to attend the best schools in Moscow, he's hardly going to spend any quality time with them as there's just so many of them. But hey, at least money isn't an issue with that Russian family.
DeleteThese central Americans from places like Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador etc - hey, I'm not racist okay, I speak Spanish, you should've seen me in Miami speaking Spanish with the old Cuban ladies. But I just think that it is so irresponsible to have many children when you're financially unstable - I'm like your parents in this aspect: I think a couple should get married, get themselves to a comfortable financial position before even considering having a baby so the baby can have a great start to life - the parents are then in a position to pay for the baby's future education rather than worrying about where the baby's next meal is gonna come from. Like that family from Honduras walking to America, good grief, they have no money, no jobs, no home, nada, absolutely nothing yet they are still busy making babies?! Like seriously, even if they wanna have sex, they should do it in a way which does not result in yet another pregnancy under such circumstances?!
These Catholics puzzle me you know, they have these teenage mothers because they don't allow for abortions, but then why are their teenagers so busy screwing each other like there's no tomorrow until all these girls are pregnant by 16 or 17? If they're going to clamp down hard on abortion, how about clamping down even harder on what is causing all these teenage pregnancies in the first place? I'm not a prude, teenagers are going to do what they do, but they have got to address the issue that these young people have no money so sex is probably one of the most thrilling things you can do on a budget (hey, those computer games cost a lot of money). Geez. That's what keeping those central American countries so extremely poor.
I didn't mean that having more babies causes people to be born poor and stay poor, but the reverse case. That if there is a society where even if a girl doesn't get pregnant her whole life she will die poor if she was born poor, that she will be more likely to choose to get pregnant than if she thought she had a chance of getting rich. Also I presume that Russian guy had 10 children with various women who can also help parent, or if he had 10 children with one woman he can hire as many nannies as necessary in case they need a break from parenting. I will admit, me not having children despite being in my mid-20s is mostly due to a combination of laziness and greed. I like being able to live like a big kid playing videogames after work with my friends and going on vacations with them instead of spending that money on raising a child, which I'd rather do much later after I've had my fill of debauchery. But suppose I didn't have much money, what am I giving up to have a baby if I already have so little? And if someone is giving up very little and gaining something, the choice looks more attractive.
DeleteAlso I don't think it's videogames costing a lot of money per se that acts as a very expensive form of contraception. I went to a private school with very rich kids and there was one girl in my class who had 6 boyfriends by the time she was 15, and she was just as much a gamer as I was. And even in adulthood there are very horny rich people who go to bars and have lots of casual sex. I think the only difference between wealthy women and poorer women is whether they would keep the baby if an accidental pregnancy does happen. That wealthy classmate of mine has a lot of good experiences ahead of her that she would have to give up if she had a baby young. Meanwhile a 17 year old boy and girl in Honduras does not have as much to give up if they had a baby as they have very little prospects at all.
Btw personally I think the world would be better off if we had a higher percentage of LGBT people. When people have to jump through a lot of hoops just to have a child then they will put more thought into it. Also, if there is a lower fertility rate I think it would cause people to value each other more, though that may be a bit naive. Kinda reminds me of Startrek where life is valued above all since money no longer exists. But that probably isn't gonna happen any time soon. We have the technology to build new houses to house everyone, but real estate companies don't want to because not building houses raises the price of existing houses. At the same time that Singapore and other countries are worrying about an aging population, you see deforestation occuring in South America to make room for agriculture to feed their growing population. Society is very inefficiently run.
Well Amanda, there's a difference between planned pregnancies and oops I'm pregnant cases. Let's look at the rich Russian guy for example, he is worth many millions, you know the insane rich in Russia - when women marry him, they wanna desperately stake their claim to his millions by making him father a child, so that even if he gets bored of them and move on to a younger wife (you see the pattern here), she can say, "you must pay child support, you can divorce me but you must provide for me to raise your son/daughter." In this case, the child becomes an insurance policy for the future given that this Russian guy has a habit of starting a family, getting bored and moving on, repeating the process all over again with a younger woman. I don't understand his motivation - it isn't sex per se because he can certainly snap his fingers and buy that with his money.
DeleteI also refer you down to my reply to Jon below when I talked about my mother and aunt who were both uneducated women of their generation who were happy to define themselves as wives and mothers, to feel like they have fulfilled their obligations to society in producing babies. Well what else can they do? Not much, given they're so uneducated. Contrast that to you - you're a highly intelligent woman who has accomplished so much and you'll go on to accomplish a lot more. Well my mother and aunt never had that privilege to feel like that as they never had the chance to get much of an education in the 1940s and 1950s in Singapore.
Oh the Russian rich guy works in banking - earning an insane amount of money, enough for him to bring up as many children as he likes. So who is better off? The child of a Russian tycoon who wants to spread his DNA far and wide and can afford to do so? Or the child of that family from Honduras who have absolutely no money but want to have more children? Obviously, the Russian child in this case will have a more comfortable life - they will live in a nice house, have regular meals, have an education, have nice clothes to wear etc but have little contact with their father whilst the Honduran kids will see their parents 24/7. Which family will place a higher value on their relationships with their family members?
DeleteI kinda think in the straight community men are praised for siring as many children as possible, like Zeus from the Greek myths. So this Russian man sounds like he's doing it for ego rather than a willingness to raise 10 children. He kinda reminds me of Clint Eastwood, whose had at least 8 children by at least 4 different women, possibly more.
DeleteRecently I came across this interesting article about how Ultra-Orthodox jews are a burden on Israel's secular society.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-haredi-min-men-don-t-need-to-work-1.5195749
Israel's total fertility rate is 3.0, but the average couple only has 2 kids or less. Instead their numbers are skewed because the Ultra-Orthodox community which makes up 13% of Israel's population have 10 children on average. The funny thing is that unlike most ultra-religious communities with many kids, its the women who work and the men who stay home. According to one of their community leaders, a man, "There is nothing in the Torah that says men must work." In their society men must devote their entire lives to studying the Torah, and follow its teachings including having as many children as possible. Because studying the Torah is a must but not a very profitable activity, the community asks the wives to work. Women in their community have an 85% employment rate, and are given a normal education so may even work very high paying careers as scientists, engineers, doctors, and lawyers. The men only have a 45% employment rate because even after they're done with Torah study they have only learnt the Torah all their life and not even math or science in primary school or high school, so cannot find lucrative work if any.
However, even on the wife's salary, unless she is a rich banker it's not gonna feel like very much when there are 12 mouths to feed, so the Ultra-Orthodox community relies a lot on state welfare. Secular jews really hate how the Orthodox men are basically welfare kings at this point. And y'know what their response is? "Someone has to stay home and look after the kids! Are you saying both parents should work and not see their children?" Can't imagine a single mother with 7 children on benefits in the UK unabashedly saying this in public. The secular jews don't care that a man wants to be a stay-at-home dad, they are more pissed that this stay-at-home dad wants to have 10 children and expect other people to pay for them. Israel may not have issues with replacing their population, but they do have problems with paying for so many children in poverty using taxes from the people who choose not to have kids.
I kinda think its funny to see how this will play out in Israel in the next 50 years. If the Ultra-Orthodox community keeps outbreeding the secular community then we'll see an Israel where the men are uneducated and stay home to look after 10 children, while the women hold all the jobs in government and industry. What a role reversal!
Btw, with regards to the Honduran family, I kinda know a person like that who lives in Denmark. His parents seem to be refugees or low-skilled economic migrants who somehow got a visa to stay in the country. The thing is he doesn't even speak good Danish and says he goes to a school which has a majority of teenagers like him who are the child of immigrants and also bad Danish speakers. I'm surprised he speaks better English than Danish despite being born in Denmark, and he says the Danish teachers can be really annoyed at that.
DeleteAnyway he seems like an okay guy who wants to study to be a doctor one day, which was how I started talking to him, in an online science discussion forum. I don't want to look down too hard on families who aren't super wealthy when they have children, because it looks like this guy's parents didn't have a lot of opportunities back home which was why they came to Denmark. They still don't have much opportunities now, but their children have more opportunities than what they would have had the parents stayed in their home countries. Its not an ideal situation, maybe the parents should have prioritized their own education first before starting a family. But as long as they aren't having 6 kids like the Hengs, I think its forgivable.
That Russian man probably has a lot more than 10 children by now given his pattern of behaviour but hey, at least we know those kids are getting a good education, have shoes on their feet, are being fed regular meals and have a roof over their heads, unlike the kids in Honduras. As for Israel, I will write a longer comment later after lunch. It's a really complex situation there.
DeleteAs for Israel, the ultra-orthodox community are still a minority at 13% and they are of some use to the Israeli authorities - for example, you know how Israel is always building illegal settlements on Palestinian land, so it is often these very poor Jewish families with so many kids who are offered such housing if they come to depend on the state for housing - the government needs someone willing to live in such controversial (and potentially unsafe) areas, these people need housing, it is a win-win situation for them especially since these ultra-Orthodox Jews are ideologically motivated to occupy such lands. A second point is that Israel's population is always growing due to returning Jews - so if you're Russian for example but you can prove that you have Jewish blood, then you may 'return' to Israel and claim citizenship on that basis. Israel is relatively prosperous compared to a lot of former Soviet states where people are often seeking out their one Jewish grandmother to prove Jewish ancestry, so these returning Jews (ironic name as some of them have never set foot in Israel until they arrive to start a new life there) are highly unlikely to be ultra-Orthodox and will be more secular, to letting them settle in Israel will ensure that the ultra-Orthodox Jews will never become 20% or even 30% of the population, causing the economic growth to stagnate and burdening the state too much.
DeleteAnd Amanda - the Hengs in Singapore had 7 children, not 6.
DeleteYeah I always wondered why Israel was so lax with immigration laws for "returning" Jews, but then again some countries in the past have been very lax with regards to refugees because they need more young people to pay pensions (e.g Belgium).
Delete7 kids?! I don't even know how they all fit in one flat. A 3 bedroom hdb would need 3-4 kids per room. Even my undergrad dorm was not that crowded. Your nephew is much more well cared for by comparison, with a rich highly educated mother and father and just him to spend their time and money on.
Personally though I'm hesitant to stay in America if I want children because of university tuition costs. Its a problem for the parents of 18-22 year olds today, where they have to dip into their own retirement savings to pay for college for their child, which can run up to $20k usd/year per child. You can see how families would be hesitant to have more than 1 child if they are struggling just to pay for college for even 1 kid. However a Honduran couple with 3 children is probably not even thinking about college since hardly anyone has a degree back home, which is why the Latino population has the highest birthrate in America.
Hi Amanda, I don't think it is a simple question of needing more young people to pay pensions that Belgium lets in more refugees. Remember that refugees are simply those who are admitted on the basis that they are fleeing an unsafe part of the world (usually because of war) and they could be uneducated and in need of medical treatment. Even those who can work, well what kind of work can they do if they don't even speak the local language or have any useful skills? Remember that the progressive tax system in European countries mean that people who end up doing the lowest paid jobs pay virtually no tax and contribute next to nothing in pensions whilst richer folks pay a lot more taxes. When a country takes in a refugee, they usually arrive with no more than the clothes on their back so you have to give them a roof over their head, clothes, food, education, medical treatment etc - oh they are expensive to take care of and governments spend soooo much money on them - this is not because they hope to make a 'profit' in terms of their future pension contributions but because it is a humanitarian gesture of mercy and kindness to take care of a refugee. But from an economic perspective, it's not even a question of breaking even, it's a massive loss when you measure what the government spends on a refugee and how much they contribute in return; I'm just pointing out the statistics here. You're assuming that Belgium expects these refugees to contribute a lot in their pension contributions but in reality, they contribute virtually nothing and are net beneficiary of the system. The white Europeans pay for the refugees to live in Belgium.
DeleteOne thing I like to point out is the more educated and empowered the women population is, the less likely they will want to have many kids. They may chose to spend their energy more on their career or other area of their life rather than invest in having many kids.
ReplyDeleteWell Jon, allow me to reflect on my own family: as you know, my mother is uneducated and so is her sister. I want to stress, not their fault, they were born in the 40s during the Japanese occupation and spent their childhoods in Singapore during the 1940s and 1950s, when Singapore was so desperately poor and my grandparents had way too many children despite being penniless - that's the reason why my mother and my aunt didn't get much of an education and they were pretty typical of women of that period I'm afraid. They had this competition between them - who could get married first, who could have a child first and who could have a son first. It was really sad to see women measure their self-worth, their place in society in terms of defining themselves first as wives, then mothers who could produce sons. But look at them: they're not educated at all, they couldn't get good jobs, like if you look at their CVs they have nothing impressive, they have accomplished nothing.
DeleteContrast that to my two sisters one generation later - both sisters are graduates, highly skilled professionals earning a LOT of money in their jobs, very highly respected in their field, senior positions in their companies, managing a team of younger people who look up to them, they are so rich and successful: if you look at their CVs, they have such impressive accomplishments from the time they were students right through their extremely successful careers. Women like my sisters are typical of their generation: they define themselves through their accomplishments. They can say, "I did all that, I achieved so much - what did you do with your life?" Whereas my mother and my aunt achieved so little, okay circumstances were different in those days but the only way they could feel successful was to have fulfilled their obligations in society, "I got married, I have had children, I had a son - so by that token, I am a success, I have done what is expected of me."
So if you were to compare my mother and my aunt vs my two sisters, it is evident that they have very, very different attitudes towards getting married and having children. Did my aunt and mother nag at their children to have plenty of babies? Of course they did, that's all they have ever known. But did we listen to them? Of course not. Sigh, I hate to sound cruel. My mother and my aunt are totally uneducated, like my mother doesn't know how online banking works and she is even nervous about using a microwave oven or an ATM - that's how totally uneducated people view the world, they are scared of basic, simple things that we take for granted. As my generation has become so well-educated, we take it upon us to protect our parents, take care of them and mostly save them from their own stupidity. Don't get me started on the long list of stupid things my mother has done over the years. Part 2 coming up.
In Hokkien, we make a difference between "bo tak chek" (ie. someone hasn't had the opportunity to go to school) and "bueh tak chek" (ie. someone who is so bloody stupid and low IQ that even if you gave them the best teachers in the world they would still fail all the exams). My mother's excuse is that she belongs to the "bo tak chek" category but seriously, I swear she ticks both boxes. Like she would get a letter from the government about something like a tax bill or even a simple utility bill and she wouldn't understand it - she would have to show it to my sister who would deal with it. She cannot understand even the most basic, simple things in life and okay, it's not her fault that she is 'bueh tak chek' - that's just a simple function of the genetic lottery. Some people are born stupid, some are born very intelligent and that's totally random.
DeleteWhich is why people like my mother and my aunt choose to measure their self-worth based on a biological function, the ability to have babies - they don't need to study for it, there's no exam: they just have sex, get pregnant and hopefully in 9 months, out pops a baby and then everyone celebrates. Whereas the kinds of achievements that my two sisters are proud of involve a lot of hard work, a lot of brain power, a lot of exams and are a lot more difficult to achieve.
The contrast between my sisters and my mother couldn't be more stark - like I speak to my sisters in English and often speak to my mother in Hokkien because I fear that if I spoke in English, she wouldn't understand what the hell I am saying. That's why people of my generation choose to totally ignore our parents when it comes to taking advice from them on any matter including that of having children. We just accept that we're on our own, we're more educated and wise than our parents, they're totally unable to help us or even give any kind of useful advice, so to listen to them would be a really dumb thing to do of course. It'll be like me going to my mother for advice with my French exams at university, knowing that my mother doesn't speak a word of French and is in no position whatsoever to be of any help at all in those circumstances. No, we protect our parents from their own stupidity, we take care of our parents, but we simply do NOT listen to them when it comes to advice; they can think what they want about women's place in society, we're not going to change their minds but we sure as hell aren't going to allow them to influence us.
Disclaimer: I know my family's situation is pretty extreme in that my parents are totally uneducated idiots whilst my siblings and I are extremely highly educated. I can appreciate that in other families, the gap in education between the parents and the children isn't that stark. I look at my nephew + my sister today, that gap is non-existent because I doubt my nephew is going to become more educated than his parents; at best he will become as educated as his parents. That will lead to a very different dynamic for his relationship with his parents (when he can respect the fact that they are well educated and wise) vs my case (when I have to protect my totally uneducated parents from their own stupidity).
Hi Sandra, thank you for the excellent analysis. If I may offer my response please:
ReplyDelete1. There is a massive gulf between older Asian women and younger ones with completely different perspectives when it comes to the issue of childbirth. Much of this gulf has already been discussed already, but sure I am only pointing out the elephant in the room that this gulf exist. The whole reason why I brought up this point is because Naomi treated 'family centric Asian culture' as if it was something like an antique Ming vase in a Chinese museum, something totally set in stone and a permanent feature of Chinese culture that doesn't ever change but I am merely pointing out that our culture has changed so much in just one generation.
2. I am pleased that Asian women are empowered enough to ignore their naggy mothers and mother-in-laws and avoid being pressured into becoming baby making machines. Does my mother nag? Sure she does. Do my sisters listen to her? Sort of, they smile, nod then ignore her - we don't go out of our way to remind our mother that she is in no position to offer any kind of advice, but even at some level, she must realize that she is no longer in any kind of position to tell her children what to do now we're adults who are just going to ignore her. She has ZERO influence over us and our actions - heck, if she had her way, I would be in Singapore married to a nice Chinese woman, but I'm instead married to a nice Irish man in London. I know what my mother wants but can I be bothered trying to give her what she wants or try to make her happy? Not if it is going to be at the expense of my happiness.
3. As for the situation in Israel, I refer you down to the response I wrote above to Jon regarding my mother and aunt (both of whom are uneducated) - my mother and aunt have nothing to show for in terms of their education or their career, it's not their fault as they were born into a tragically poor family during WW2, talk about having the odds stacked against you. Then my grandfather died when they were very young, so yeah it's not their fault that they were uneducated, circumstances were awful for them during their childhood. But they gained satisfaction and self-worth by fulfilling their roles as wives and mothers, they took great pride in being able to produce a son. You and I may roll our eyes in cynical disbelief at that thought, but hey women like Sandra and Amanda are so highly educated and have achieved so much compared to my mum and aunt who have achieved virtually nothing. Like I swear, nothing (again, not their fault, ref: their tragic childhood). As for the ultra-Orthodox Jews, I see some similarities: if you're born into a very poor Jewish family with 10 siblings and have huge restrictions on your activities and education, the chances of you growing up to become a doctor or engineer are painfully slim (not unless you make a clean break from your very religious family). So faced with an inability to establish a career with impressive achievements, they need to find validation in a different way: set against the historical context of Jewish people facing persecution and genocide over the centuries, topping up the Jewish population literally by making more Jewish babies may seem like the most honourable mission and it would give them a sense of purpose (especially if they can't achieve much in the regular sense of having a decent career).
Hey Sandra, I didn't know you were married to a Jewish man. Very interesting perspective you gave.
ReplyDeleteI think it's surprising that all this Jewish baby-making, secular or Ultra-orthodox, came from the Jewish people feeling their religion and way of life was under threat. I guess since Asian cities and countries are so crowded the average person in Singapore doesn't feel they are doing anything special for their ethnic group by having more kids. There is nothing wrong with that though, having children should be a personal decision. Btw I totally get what you mean by annoying-in-laws in Asia. Though I think this only applies to families where one spouse is much wealthier than the other and relies on their parents for money. My cousin gave up her job as a chemistry teacher when she got married, and I can see her relationship with her in-laws is one of reference since her husband works in the family business. Nowadays if both people in the couple make their own money, the in-laws can go to hell like in Alex and his sisters' case.
In the case of the Ultra-orthodox in Israel, I just think it's very unstable that the government requires forming coalitions to govern, and they almost always need the support of the Ultra-orthodox party which demands state welfare. That party may even win more seats in the future if the Ultra-orthodox population outgrows the secular one. Although I think it's great they really put effort into women's education out of necessity, I can't imagine how life would be for the less bright women born into such a community who can't land a decent job to support 10 children. Also it's not wise to have half the population in a community being uneducated and dependent on welfare or their spouse, and more men being ineligible for military service. It was bad for women to be in that position 100 years ago in Europe, and in that position right now in parts of Africa, Asia, and South America. Likewise it is just as bad for these Ultra-Orthodox males today. I remember reading a nytimes article where they said Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities also exist in New York city, and the men who left the community are basically illiterate in English(only know Hebrew) among other things and ill-equipped to survive on their own.
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ReplyDeleteGreat analysis Choaniki but I think you may have cut + paste something into your comment above? Anyway, I believe the key to these changes is the status of women today vs the status of women in my parents' generation. Women were taught to measure their self-worth in terms of how many babies and especially sons they could produce and that was it - it was a terribly sexist, even misogynistic society back then. Today women have equal access to higher education and thus are breadwinners who have equal status as men in a relationship - hence they are not confined to the role of 'babymakers' when they can use their PhDs and earning power to define their roles in society today.
DeleteIts nothing P&C but i will edit out the front portion to reduce confusion.
DeleteLet me start by saying that Singapore is not a typical East Asian society seeing that we have so much influence from Great Britain and USA. Just take a trip to China to see how far we have drifted in culture from them. In fact i would posit that Japan, S.Korea, and China are more similar culture-wise than Singapore.
With that out of the way, i would generally say this is more of an effect from Confucius's teachings rather than a specific East Asian cultural norm.
Confucius emphasised on a few things, namely filial piety, family harmony, and gender roles amongst other teachings.
According to Confucius, family hierarchy and respect for parents as a matter-of-fact instead of having to be earned. Children have to listen to their parents or be labelled not filial (不孝) and he teaches that the parents' will should be adhered to even after they have passed on.
For the family harmony value, the children have to pay respects to the seniors (parents, grandparents, etc) in the family. This includes visiting them for weekly family meals and also joining for the Lunar New Year reunion meal.
Finally, Confucius taught that women should stay at home and take care of her husband and the family while men should go out and earn a keep. Women are inferior to men and should be docile and listen to them at all times. Which means that the father and husband have the greatest power in a household.
So as you can see, all these Confucius values combine to make it appear that East Asians are family centric when they are just following Confucius's teachings.
Singapore doesn't seem that adherent to his teaching nowadays. But the older generations still try to follow them and brainwash their children to attempt to follow them. Simple passing them of as "Asian values" as our ministers like to call them. But these are outdated concepts and they should be adhered to only when they seem logical, which many of them aren't.
As a Catholic mother of one, I am happy with just having a son. If I have had a girl and had the means, I would have tried for a boy.
ReplyDeleteChildren are terribly expensive. They are also exhausting and a huge responsibility. I wish those people on social assistance would stop having children to collect bigger government checks. I'm paying for their checks.
Too darn right Di, I have nothing against people with many kids as long as they are able to provide for those children (ref: the story above in my chat with Amanda about the Russian millionaire with 10+ kids). It is about being responsible for the child's well-being and if people are in no position to provide for their child, then they really shouldn't be having children in the first place. A condom costs a lot less than bringing up a child.
DeleteI'm going out a limb and grossly generalising here, but i think East Asian women are quite materialistic. Be they Hong Konger, Taiwanese, PRC, Japanese, S.Korean, all of them can't resist a BMW and LV handbag. Which is why you should expect the TFR to continue to drop because kids are getting very expensive to raise. Every cent spent on your child is once cent less spent on luxury goods.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's a fair assessment Choaniki - the TFR has fallen in so many countries from Australia to Canada to Germany to Russia to even Bangladesh: simply chalking it up to women buying more handbags and shiny things is not an answer, it is just one of many, many reasons that has affected such a big shift in our attitudes. What about the husbands? What role do they play in this process, after all, you're going to need the husband to participate in the process, it's not like the women can create a baby without a man.
DeleteThis is why I get so fed up with people who think that there's just ONE reason for a complex decision - even when I make a minor decision like picking a holiday destination, there are so many factors to consider: is this a good time of the year to visit, is the weather going to be nice or am I going in the rainy season? What kind of accommodation will be available? Is public transport reliable there or will I have to rent a car? How many days do I need to do this place justice? Are the flights there reasonably convenient or am I going to have an 5 hour stop over in Frankfurt airport? Will I enjoy the food there? Will there be enough activities to occupy my time? What if it rains, will I have wet weather alternatives like museums and malls to occupy my time even if it is raining heavily? Am I going to get good value for money in this destination? That's just some of the many factors I would consider for something as minor as choosing a destination for a weekend getaway with my hubby.
So for you to pinpoint this massive, major shift in our attitudes towards having babies, TFR and the status of women in our society on just ONE factor - even I'm sure you would realize that this is at best one out of one hundred factors that has come into play but you're making a big deal out of it whilst ignoring all these other important factors which are less exciting/controversial, such as the quality of education that women of this generation have received compared to their parents.
I have never claimed this to be the sole cause of the TFR dropping, it would be hyperbole to say so.
DeleteLike you have mentioned there are various causes and another obvious one would be the increase in housing prices. Regardless of what a certain politician might say (Jo Teo), the decrease in living spaces does lead to a decrease in the number of kids. Even experiments have proven this as mice stopped reproducing after a certain population density was reached even when given abundant food and water.
This is an example of the kind of question I am training my nephew to deal with in his A level exams, though admittedly this is probably more a question that one would encounter in a geography rather than economics exam. He would get a complex question like "account for the factors leading to the fall in TFR over the last few decades in East Asia". He would then have to create a shortlist of relevant factors to answer this question then rank them from most important to least important - he would then have to start to formulate his answer starting with the most important factor, followed by the second most important factor and work his way down the list. He would then spend more time on the important factors and less time on the minor factors on that list - thus in this case, materialism, spending money on handbags is a very minor point that's so far down the list. In fact if you were to look at my mother's case, she couldn't even choose to be materialistic as my parents were earning so little money back when they were first married buying a fancy handbag wasn't even possible. It wasn't like they had money but chose to spend it wisely - rather it was the fact that they were struggling from pay check to pay check and thus being materialistic wasn't even possible back then under such difficult circumstances.
DeleteIt's like saying, "look at Alex, he's not spending hundreds of dollars on hair care products and hair salon treatments because he isn't vain." When really, I have no hair, I'm completely bald. Even if I turned up at the most fancy hair salon in Singapore, they would be like, "sir I am not sure what we can do for you." So the whole comparison is based on warped logic to begin with - it's not like our parents' generation are more sensible and less materialistic, it was simply that they were just so piss poor a generation ago.
I am materialistic, but I don't drive a BMW or own a Louis Vuitton anything. I am materialistic in that I believe in traveling, owning a house, investment property, private school education, sports and music, eating well, and living well.
DeleteI don't think there's anything wrong with being materialistic per se as long as it is channeled in a positive way. If you have that motivation to work harder, improve yourself, climb that career ladder in order to earn more money, then why not? If that materialistic streak in you in driving you to succeed in life, then I say it is a good thing. Mind you, let's put it this way - imagine if my mother won the lottery in 1967 and we gave her a million dollars then, would she have spent the money wisely? I doubt it somehow, my mother has made many, many dubious, poor decisions over the years. But of course, in 1967, she was so incredibly poor. It's a hypothetical bridge we would never cross because she was so poor back then, so the fact that she didn't waste her money on handbags and accessories wasn't some kind of virtue or aspect of her morality, but simply a reflection of the fact that in 1967, she had no money and was pathetically poor. Conversely, if we take your "materialistic" Chinese lady from 2021 and put her in a time machine back to 1967, then we tell her, "by the way, you are poor now, in 1967 most people were terribly poor". Then by default, she can't be materialistic under those circumstances in 1967.
DeleteThere's a problem I have with Choaniki's logic - correlation doesn't mean causation. Yes more women are rich today, more women can buy nice things like branded handbags and fancy shoes that cost thousands of dollars. But it is not the wealth that has caused them to be materialistic - we could go in circles arguing which came first: the chicken or the egg? I remember what it is like to be poor when I was younger and looking at nice things in the shop window that I could never afford - yes you can be poor and materialistic at the same time, I desired those nice things I couldn't afford but became determined to earn a lot more money so I would never be in that position where I see something nice and feel that I'm not worthy. Likewise, if you gave my mother a million dollars in 1967, I'm sure she would probably spend a lot of it on things that Choaniki wouldn't approve of.