The dirty secret of Singapore parents


Heavy burden: The main responsibilities that women undertake are ones that require daily attention, and which have a larger ongoing impact or can potentially disrupt the regular functioning or rhythm of the household. — The Straits Times/ANN

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare – your child, found unconscious, while under the watch of another caregiver.

When a coroner’s inquiry was recently opened on a six-month-old boy who died under the care of his nanny, netizens were quick to blame the woman’s assumed lack of skills, negligence or both.

But for many working parents in Singapore like myself, nannies are a lifeline.

When my children were very young, I had considered the alternatives and found them unsatisfactory.

First of all, their grandparents did not have confidence in handling babies, and we weren’t sure that a live-in helper could manage both infant care and housework alone during the day.

Also, we had been put on long wait lists for the infant care centres we applied to.

The fees, ranging from over S$1,300 to S$2,000 (RM4,290 to RM6,600) a month, were higher than hiring a nanny at S$600 (RM1,980), even after taking into account government subsidies at the time.

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So even before my first child was born, we booked the services of a nanny who had good reviews on online parenting forums. Let’s call her Madam Tan.

Every morning, my husband and I handed over our child to Madam Tan at the void deck of the Housing Board flat where she lived.

In the evening, we picked our child up from her home. If we ran late – which was often – she was understanding and did not charge us extra.

The business of care

I instructed Madam Tan to place my child on her side or on her back, but never on her tummy – a position which some say increases the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.

With no means of monitoring her activities – her home had no closed-circuit TV – how could I tell if she was following instructions, or simply outsourcing care to her children while she went grocery shopping?

A quick online search of nanny agencies shows that they advertise children-loving, reference-checked candidates who undergo life-saving and first- aid training.

But the reality is that there are no specific regulations for small-scale, home-based care services in Singapore. Regulation, with its attendant registration requirements, may discourage such familial arrangements.

As time went by, Madam Tan took on more and more infants and toddlers, including her own grandchildren.

Worried that she could not devote enough attention to our child, we stopped using her services and placed our child in a childcare centre.

This presented a fresh problem: neither of us were in jobs where we could get off work before 7pm, the closing time for these centres. We were fined S$10 (RM33) for every five minutes we ran late.

Once our children were older, we switched them to half-day childcare and enlisted the help of their grandparents to pick them up from the centre every afternoon instead.

An unpaid army

It’s not just the profound, ragged exhaustion of juggling work and household duties that trails the parent of a young child like a shadow.

It is also guilt: guilt that one may have abrogated one’s rights to demand standards from another human being, when one has failed to even fulfil the most basic standard for a parent – that of caring for one’s own child.

My children are older now and more independent. But looking back on those early years, I’m amazed at how I – and possibly some of my bosses – took it for granted that I had an ecosystem of support from helpers to grandparents and relatives, often women whose services were lowly paid or not paid at all.

It was their support that I never spoke of in the office, almost as if I was keeping a dirty secret – which allowed me to go on work trips at a moment’s notice, or continue working even though my child was sick.

But not all families have the luxury of making alternative care-giving arrangements.

A book recently published by the non-profit organisation Daughters of Tomorrow (DOT) describes how many who live in public rental flats either cannot afford professional caregiving help, or may not be able to balance caregiving with work.

Some overnight rates for professional babysitting services, for example, can cost up to S$45 (RM148.50) per hour.

In fact, inadequate childcare is the single largest barrier to employment among DOT beneficiaries, affecting 35% of them in 2021.

They also have to grapple with prevailing social expectations that mothers are the primary caregivers.

A 2021 study by market research firm Ipsos and the non-profit United Women Singapore showed that the main responsibilities that women undertake are ones that require daily attention, and which have a larger ongoing impact or can potentially disrupt the regular functioning or rhythm of the household.

The responsibilities taken on more by men are likely less frequent in nature, such as paying bills or household repairs, the study noted.

The result is that for lower- income and more vulnerable women, some end up doing informal work with more flexible hours to accommodate their household responsibilities.

Such jobs have less or no career progression and staff benefits, which in turn affects their longer-term job security and income levels.

The alternatives

What can be done? Suggestions over the years include reviewing the need for more night-time childcare, and offering such programmes in areas where low- income families live.

It was noted in a speech during a 2021 debate on the Ministry of Social and Family Development’s (MSF) budget that more than 40 childcare centres operate beyond 7pm on weekdays, and the ministry was studying the possibility of piloting night-time childcare at a Community Link (ComLink) site.

In a written reply to a parliamentary question in 2022, MSF observed that the number of families which need caregiving support varies across ComLink towns, and it is also not clear that night-time childcare is the preferred model across the board.

One example of an evening support programme is CareNights by Morning Star Community Services, which is aimed at children aged six to 14 from 6pm to 10pm on weekdays.

It is offered to parents whose combined income is up to S$4,500 (RM14,850).

Another childminding programme, but one which is home-based, is run by DOT in collaboration with MSF. It provides parents with after-hours childcare in their own homes, to allow them to seek employment opportunities or to go for skills training.

It would be good to get an update from the authorities on whether parents’ needs for such services have remained stable or have gone up, whether there are plans to open more of these night-time centres or home-based services, and which model of care is most effective, especially for lower-income families.

Such services are not unique to Singapore. In other countries, night-time or 24-hour childcare is practised in response to shifting working patterns such as longer and more irregular hours, or certain occupations such as nursing and law enforcement that have unconventional hours.

Some nurseries in Europe allow children to be dropped off at their premises at 6am, or accept pickups as late as midnight. In parts of Sweden, nurseries run by local councils have for decades provided overnight services.

Other suggestions which some MPs made this year include changing extended childcare leave entitlement to two days per primary school-age child, up to a cap of four days a year, and extending childcare leave to children in secondary school.

Currently, an employee has two days of extended childcare leave per year if his youngest child is in primary school, regardless of the number of children.

MPs also highlighted the need for sufficient infant care and childcare facilities in new HDB estates.

Some couples, they pointed out, stay at their homes there only on weekends and live with their parents during the work week, due to the lack of childcare spaces and amenities when they moved in.

In the end, public acceptance of schemes like night-time childcare also depends on cultural and social norms.

Are Singaporean parents across the income spectrum generally less willing to outsource childcare to external parties, preferring to tap their extended families instead?

If it’s due to a lack of confidence in external caregivers, will it help to have more training and accreditation in a sector which, beyond formal care centres, is largely unregulated – or cause an already limited pool of hired caregivers to shrink further instead?

What are employers doing, when it comes to giving their employees the assurance that they will not be penalised for taking time off for childcare?

It requires a leap of faith to entrust one’s child to another person, even a complete stranger, for most of the week.

Sometimes, tragically, that faith turns out to be misplaced. The least society and employers can do is to not make that leap even harder than is necessary. — The Straits Times/ANN

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