the govt has been complaining about low birth rates again.. saying that our birth rates has reached an all time low last year.. how mnay? is it 1.26 or wat i forgotten already as compared to 1.37 the year before. so looks like those "award-winning" scholarship holders ideas doesn't work again huh? wat baby bonus lah, wat dunno benefits for having the 2nd child lah, blah blah..

i believe most (if not all) couples will like to have their own children. isn't it great to give birth to 1 or 2 and see him/her grow up and enjoy the process of parenthood? its a special experience i think. i won't believe some excuses that were given such as scared of pain, figure go out of shape, blah blah. look at the number of mothers who still prefer to give birth w/o any help of drugs/painkillers and you will understand what i mean. what i believe is the current state of the economy. its so gloomy still although signs are saying that recovery is on the way. retrenchment is so common. pay cut, CPF cut, price of goods increase, etc who is willing to add on their burden by having another mouth to feed? having a child is not like u give the child 3 meals thats all. what about the well-being of the child? time has to be spent but do we have the time? the singapore workforce have been working overly hard to keep their current jobs. instead of the official 9-6 now is OT unlimited with less money. we already have less time for ourselves so give me another good reason on how to find time for the child?

i also don't believe that by giving an one-time bonus or "reward" will encourage people to give birth to more babies, unless you are talking about S$1 million per child? lol! oh please! for the miserable few thousands of dollars its not even enough to cover the cost of the delivery cost incurred! no.. i'm not saying that the government should pay for the hospital charges and so on, but the idea i want to bring out is that giving rewards in monetary terms is not going to work, esp if the amount is not significant. most importantly, giving birth is a very personal thing and it involve numerous factors which are intangible and cannot be driven by money bonus.

seriously, if the cost of living is going to escalate further with dispensible income and personal time shrinking, i won't be surprised that in another year or two that the birth rate will drop below the 1.0 level...