mrbrown: Children are the solution to so many problems

Just when you thought it was safe to go at it like rabbits in the Year of the Rabbit to fulfill your obligation to the State and produce the prerequisite babies that will bring our fertility rates back up, this piece of news comes out. 

"Childcare fees on the up and up."

It seems that the childcare centers in Singapore are raising their fees by as much as 25 percent, citing rising rental costs and teacher salaries. So where you used to pay what was already an expensive $800 (US$615) a month for full day childcare, you now pay S$1,000 (US$769). 

Ouch.

Of course it's safe for my little girl to be carrying a pile of clothes, she doesn't need to see where she's going.

Stop at two? Why even start?

Is it any wonder that couples are either delaying having children or stopping at one or two? Or even 1.5 kids?

Husband: "No dear, I am afraid we can't have another half a kid. We just can't afford it."

Wife: "But the Total Fertility Rate! It's now 1.07! Our nation needs at least 2.1 to replace itself!"

Husband: "And we have exceeded the 1.07 rate by having one and a half kids. Let someone else make up the other 0.6 kid."

Wife: "But our second child will be so much nicer with an upper body …"

Husband: "The childcare center will charge us a full kid's rate if little Bobby has an upper body. He takes up less space on the bus too, because he can stand instead of sit."

And so the battle over finances rages on in the Singaporean household, in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

This is why you should have more than one kid ... household chores get done in half the time.

Put the little ones out to pasture

I think I know what the problem is. We need to make children useful units of society again. In the old days, you would breed children for farm work and the more you had, the more hands you had to help you at the farm.

These days, we are just having children for the sake of it.

I am surprised that our overly pragmatic state, where everything has a price, has not cottoned on to this.

Instead of selling couples on the idea of warm and fuzzy feelings of parenthood, show them how useful children can be.

We can start by loosening the child labor laws here. Let them work in our coffee shops and construction sites. That way, we can reduce our reliance on foreign workers at the same time.

I am sure the idea of your seven-year-old studying by day and working at a construction site by night making enough to cover his rent, will be very attractive.

I am told that kids learn very fast and can pick up computer and motor skills just like that. That's ideal for operating sophisticated machinery like a forklift and a crane, I tell you.

And are you tired of going to the coffee shop and ordering your drinks from the coffee auntie from China who does not speak English? Hire a Singaporean child to do that and let him put his English skills to some good use.

Sure, the drinks are boiling hot and the hours long, but a little hard work never killed anyone.

My two able-bodied youngsters hard at work, train them at home and send them out when they hit puberty.

Give birth to your own cheap labor

Already the government is warning us that if we don't replace ourselves, we will need to depend on foreigners for Singapore's continued growth. Hey, it's not OUR fault there are so many foreigners here, the government seems to be saying, you citizens aren't making enough babies, dammit!

Singaporeans aren't anti-foreigner, you know. We have one of the most open societies in the world. I mean, our own great-great-grandparents and great grandparents were immigrants to Singapore too.

But in the last five years, at the rate at which the government has allowed cheap foreign labor to pour into our tiny island, well, we've been kind of feeling the squeeze.

More than once, I've entered an MRT train and found myself surrounded in the carriage by just about every nationality but my own. While I was feeling that way, an SMS came in from another friend who was meeting us, and he was also on a train, and his SMS said, "I am the only local in my train, I think."

I think most of us are very happy to welcome foreigners who come here with their skills and maybe even create another 10 jobs for Singaporeans. But increasingly, you see foreign workers, many of them paid a pittance, deployed in the most mundane of tasks, like the dude who stands in front of road works, turning a STOP/GO sign.

Really? You brought this Bangladeshi worker all the way from his hometown, paid him a tiny wage, housed him in some crowded dormitory (if he is lucky), just so he could stand in the sun, hold that STOP/GO sign in coordination with his other STOP/GO sign buddy down the road?

What is HIS career path? If he does well, will he become STOP/GO sign manager and supervise a team of these elite forces?

That is why I think my plan is superior. Let's all get together, make some babies, so that our country can continue to have our own cheap labor force.

Heck, make them multi-skilled. I bet the childcare centers will have lower fees and better traffic conditions if we can also train our kids to be STOP/GO sign operators AND childcare teachers too.