In Singapore, the question of children has become less about love and more about math. Not the math of classrooms, but the calculation and subsequent allocation of time, stress, and space. As Couples weigh in whether they can raise a child here without breaking themselves? Increasingly, the answer is no as we stay a historic low birth rate of 0.97 births per woman.

Work devours the week. Official numbers say residents average around 41 hours, but the hidden ledger tells another story: A Survey by the business times finds over 90% have worked beyond working hours; many fear repercussions if they do not respond which equates to countless unpaid hours, late emails, meetings that spill into midnight. Forty per cent of workers admit they surrender six to ten unpaid hours every week—time stolen from bedtime stories and playground afternoons.

Parents turn to childcare to make up for their absence, but the system strains. Centres fill fast, some overcrowded with long wait-lists and many unaffordable. Studies consistently show that when young children spend long hours away from their parents, academic outcomes dip along with emotional and cognitive resilience.

In theory, childcare buys time for working parents. In practice, it often trades one kind of absence for another. The first bond a child forms—the attachment to a primary caregiver—shapes how safe they feel in the world and how they learn to express themselves. When that bond is stretched between parents and educators, it can weaken. Researchers call it “insecure attachment.” Parents call it the ache of being missed.

Simply put, at home, attention can be one-to-one, instinctive, a parent’s gaze attuned to every cry or smile. In childcare, it is divided through necessity: one educator, many children, each competing—softly but constantly—for affection and recognition. The consequence is subtle, not immediate: but the child learns early that love is ration that has finite supply, that comfort can be delayed, that presence is never guaranteed.

It is not the fault of teachers, who often give more than they have. It is the methodology of care, designed around efficiency rather than intimacy. The hidden cost is borne not just in test scores but in the mental architecture of a child’s trust.

The state has not been blind to the decline in births. Grants, subsidies, and baby bonuses flow in the billions, designed to lighten the cost of raising a child. Cash gifts for newborns, housing priority for young families, tax reliefs for parents—all signaling that those in charge of the nation want its citizens to reproduce.

But what these incentives cannot buy is quality time. No grant can shorten a twelve-hour workday, or soften the fatigue that follows. Money cannot stretch an evening into a long, unhurried dinner, or turn a weekend into a true respite to nature rather than recovery. Parenthood is not only a financial commitment; it is an emotional and mental one. And it is the absence of this quality time—the kind of rest that allows parents to actually care—that money cannot resolve.

It is a reminder that no system, however well-funded, can replace the intimacy of a parent’s presence in those first few thousand days. 

Now, All this unfolds in a city denser than its architects intended. Founding father Lee Kuan Yew once projected in 2008 that beyond 5.5 million souls, Singapore would feel unliveable, after which he said "he does not believe that Singapore should go the way of Hong Kong, just solid buildings, one blocking the sunlight of the other". Today, the figure has crossed six million. Towers rise, spaces shrink, and the promise of breathing room given by the nation's founding father recedes. The numbers of the nation are neat on a chart but claustrophobic on the ground.

The mental toll is undeniable. Rates of poor mental health climbed from 13 to 17 per cent in just two years while many Employers admit they rarely provide effective support.

So many young Singaporeans hesitate. Not because they don’t love children, but because they love them too much to risk raising them in exhaustion and absence.