Starting from 2026, parents in my country will get 10 weeks of shared parental leave to care for babies born on or after April 1. This is up from six weeks just a year ago.
Announced in 2024 by the government, this and other unprecedented family-friendly policies have been rolled out in recent times in rapid succession in a valiant attempt to arrest our nationโs falling Total Fertility Rate or TFR. (As of 2025, we registered our lowest TFR of 0.87 since independence)
To date, many โ including politicians, academics, and working parents โ have publicly voiced their concerns and suggested solutions for this existential crisis of our nation.
It is no different in our community of mostly stay-at-home fathers (SAHF), as we wrestle with the daily realities of caring for our children, while pondering if we are ready and able to add yet one more precious offspring to our familyโs composition. Called The Ordinary Dad (TOD), our community has grown, through mostly word of mouth, from a humble beginning of just six SAHF in March 2023 to over 120 today.
Allow me to share some recent reflections and proposals gleaned from a cross-section of dads in TOD on the subject of our nationโs dwindling population and what can be done about it.
Breaking The Stigma ofย Fathers as Full-time Caregivers
For too long, caregiving has been seen through a gendered lens.
Schools, employers, and even laws too often treat mothers as default caregivers. Fathers, on the other hand, are seen as mere weekend helpers or secondary contacts.
These notions are outdated and harmful. Not just to fathers, but to the entire family unit. Such antiquated views, by institutions and society as a whole, place way too heavy a burden on mothers. They fail to value what men can bring to the family table that goes beyond the traditional role of a breadwinner, as seen for way too long to be the only function husbands and dads have in every household.
When a school automatically lists the mother as the primary contact. When more than an eyebrow in the office is raised each time a father takes leave to care for a sick child, compared to a mother. These, and many similar real-life examples, clearly signal that caregiving is still not gender-neutral here.
The legal system, too, often reinforces these stereotypes.
For instance, when custody disputes arise, it is still far more common for mothers to be granted care and control. Fathers, on the other hand, face steep uphill battles for equal parenting rights. This discourages men from contemplating becoming primary caregivers and creates fear that, should a marriage fail, the bond between father and child will be weakened when custody goes to the mother.
To build true equity, society and its institutions โ from schools to corporate offices โ must actively dismantle these biases.ย Fathers should be empowered and recognised as equal stakeholders in raising their children. Not as afterthoughts or exceptions to the rule.
If we genuinely support family formation, our frameworks must respect both parents equally and treat shared parenting as a norm, not a rarity.
Cultural Change in the Workplace
Workplaces remain one of the biggest battlegrounds for equality in caregiving.
Although policies for flexible work are improving, culture has not caught up. Today, a mother leaving the office on time is often seen as responsible; a father doing the same is too often seen as slacking off.
This perception must change.
Genuine flexibility should be gender-blind. Leaving early to pick up a child or attend a parent-teacher meeting should not hinge on who does it, father or mother. Companies, bosses and colleagues need to demonstrate empathy and normalize fathers prioritizing family commitments over work in the same way they have always demonstrated towards mothers. Itโs either that or risk a distracted and unmotivated staff who struggles to concentrate in the workplace due to family exigencies.
Beyond flexibility, the deeper conversation should be about how to show compassion. Especially in our frenzied world now, one that moves at a speed and ferocity unseen in past generations.
For many young families today, the early childhood years โ roughly from six months to four years of age โ are especially intense. Children need near-constant attention. Sleep schedules are chaotic. Illnesses are frequent. Energy levels are perpetually low. During this stage of a familyโs life, expecting a mom or dad to perform in the workplace at pre-parenthood levels is not just unrealistic. It is downright punishing.
What we need is not just โflexi-work,โ but a more compassionate work culture. One where parents โ both mothers and fathers โ can scale down workload temporarily without jeopardising career progression.
Imagine a work model where new parents can work at, say, 60% capacity for a few years, with the remaining load filled by another parent in a different life stage. This may appear inconvenient and inefficient in the short term, but it will reap benefits and sustainability in the long term.
Both for the family and the workforce.
Capacity: The All-Too Real Barrier To Having Larger Families
There is another hard truth we must confront.
Many current solutions to the TFR issue โ money, leave, flexible work โ only realistically support families for up to one or two children. Beyond that, the issue is no longer just financial; it is human capacity.
Two parents cannot realistically handle three or more young children without burning out. Logistical nightmares. Daily mental and physical exhaustion. The load simply explodes, and no amount of extra subsidy or leave can stretch a 24-hour day for the fatigue father or mother.
In real life, families with three or more kids almost always have a third caregiver, either a helper or a grandparent. Or one parent fully at home. Without that extra pair of hands, it is simply not sustainable.
If we are serious about encouraging larger families, the direction cannot be just more subsidies or more leave. We must increase caregiving supply. That means seeing and recognising caregiving as real, legitimate, socially valuable work. And to support and fund it directly.
The government should seriously consider paying people to be full-time caregivers or homemakers โ including grandparents when they are doing the actual care. This is not about welfare; it is about labour reallocation.
In short, instead of only subsidising childcare centres or pushing employers to absorb the cost through additional leave, we as a nation should recognise caregiving itself as essential (read paid) work that keeps society going and growing.
The Invisible Cost: One Income, Many Pressures
Following from the idea of endorsing full-time caregiving as paid work, it’s important to point out that to have a fully stay-home parent, there must also be the consciousย choice to have a single income bearer. One who carries the weight of the entire family’s financial burdens.
Unfortunately, the economic environment today rarely supports such a choice.
With the cost of living ever rising, one income alone cannot realistically sustain a family of four. Much less a larger household!
We used to say โit takes a village to raise a child.โ In the old days, raising kids has always been a communal effort, not merely left in the hands of exhausted parents alone.
These days, raising kids feels more “transactional”. The village has turned into a network of paid services โ nannies, tuition teachers, enrichment programmes โ each carrying a price tag. And not a price tag every family can necessarily afford.
At the same time, success in Singapore is still tied too tightly to financial and academic achievement. We talk about securing the โ5 Csโ as the pinnacle of success in Singapore, but rarely, both online and off, celebrate the intrinsic, day-to-day joys of having children, the โCโ that matters most for building a nation.
If we aspire to build a strong, values-driven nation, we must make it economically viable for one parent to stay home full-time and ensure large families are not penalised for the very contribution we want from them.
Family-Centric Policies: Repositioning Care as Core Work
Another oft-ignored consideration: Economic policy and family policy should not run on separate tracks.
Family formation deserves precedence. We can design smarter incentives that encourage larger, thriving families while respecting each parentโs contribution.
At this point, some practical suggestions from our dads in TOD are worth considering for immediate, if not future, implementation:
* Increase housing grants for younger and larger families.
* Provide transport concessions for families with more children.
* Offer reduced tertiary fees for third or fourth children.
* Prioritise primary school placement for families with multiple children.
* Structure household benefits based on family size, not just income.
At the policy level, agencies tha champion familes, must be seen as central drivers of national progress, not mere adjuncts to economic planning. The health of families is the foundation of economic strength, and the nation’s budgets and priorities ought to reflect that.
Redefining What Success Means
Finally, we must address the cultural equation of success.
Here, we tend to associate success with higher education, career advancement, and material wealth. Yet, caregiving โ an essential role in any community โ is, more often than not, ignored or sadly undervalued.
Imagine a society where choosing to be a SAHF earns respect equivalent to any professional achievement. Or where a young person can proudly say they want to be a caregiver, not because they โcouldnโt make itโ academically, but because they see the value of the work that goes into caring, and wish to contribute to it.
In this day and age, it should no longer be hard to see that traditional markers of success often create more stress and strife than they do long-term well-being. Weโre way overdue for an overhaul of the definition of success.
Assuming of course we want society to thrive in perpetuity.
A New Vision for Fatherhood
At the end of the day, supporting busy parents, including SAHF, is not about special treatment.
It is about fairness.
It is about recognising that caregiving is not gendered work. It is about ensuring fathers (not just mothers) who choose to nurture their children at home are seen, valued, affirmed, and supported in every way possible. In workplaces, schools, policy, and the law, let’s recognise that fathers who stay home to raise children are modelling a version of success rooted in love, patience, and community.
We are not stepping back from society or quiet-quitting the workforce.
Instead, we are doing the opposite. We are helping to build our future, our nation.
The nation we build should not demand that men measure their worth and identity only through paychecks. Nor which rung on the corporate ladder they stand on. Or that women must sacrifice careers to be primary caregivers at home.
Real progress comes when both men and women can choose freely and be celebrated, not penalised, for doing what is best for their families during different seasons of their lives.
If we are to thrive with more confident, compassionate children, raised by intentional and hands-on parents like SAHF, we must start by creating a society that honours care as much as (if not more than) career, and capacity as much as cash.
When fathers are empowered to parent fully alongside mothers, and caregiving itself is recognised as real work, then, maybe, just maybe, families here can finally grow again in size and strength.
And in turn, so can our nation once more.
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