SINGAPORE, May 21 — Researchers in Singapore are preparing a White Paper on fertility and child development that will be handed to a new government workgroup as the city-state confronts a record-low birth rate and a growing sense that the pressures of family life are outpacing support.
The paper will be jointly developed by the National University of Singapore’s Yong Soo Lin School of Medicine and the Population Association of Singapore, and will be submitted when ready to the Marriage and Parenthood Reset Workgroup. That body is expected to release its findings in early 2027, giving the effort a long runway but also a clear policy window. Singapore’s total fertility rate fell to 0.87 in 2024, down from 0.97 the year before, underscoring why the government is pressing for new answers now.
At a conference tied to the announcement, Indranee Rajah said policymakers are focused on three pressures shaping family decisions: financial support, the perceived stress of raising children and time scarcity. She described the challenge as “the tension between two good things,” saying Singaporeans work hard and strive for excellence, but that the pursuit of achievement can come at the expense of rest, well-being and the space needed for marriage and parenthood.
The workgroup is now looking at the costs families face at different stages of raising children, while the government also plans to engage students, parents, teachers and academics in discussions about how to ease the education arms race. The policy push reflects a larger effort to reverse falling birth rates in a country where family formation has become tangled up with work demands, school competition and the daily arithmetic of time.
That broader picture was sharpened by research presented at the conference, which found that better workplace policies, shifting gender norms and stronger community support are needed to improve children’s development outcomes and Singapore’s fertility outlook. One study found that children placed in non-parental care in their first 18 months showed stronger cognitive development between the ages of three and six, but also faced a higher risk of behavioural problems. More than half the children in non-parental care were there for more than 50 hours a week.
Professor Jean Yeung said extended non-parental care raises parental stress, which can affect parenting quality, and that primary caregivers, usually mothers, were more likely to use punitive methods of discipline as a result. She said the context is that these mothers have to leave their babies for very long hours, creating anxiety and stress among women. The finding cuts against any simple trade-off between care arrangements and outcomes: some children may gain cognitively, but the strain on parents can still reverberate through the home.
The question now is whether the White Paper can turn those findings into policies that make parenthood feel less punishing without asking families to lower their expectations for work, school and success. Singapore has already named the problem; the next test is whether it can make having children fit more easily into the lives people are actually living.
