Helping my dad do his income tax submission, i just found out that men get a tax relief of SGD 2000 for having a wife.What is the rationale? Does it just cost only SGD 2000 to support a wife? Is it because they are discouraging wives to stay home but to go out and work? If so, what is this call for Singaporeans to have more children? On TV a female MP, Halimah Yacob commented :
"A huge number of women enter the workforce, and they leave when they are in their late 20s, early 30s when they have children. And that's a huge waste because there's been a lot of investment in them. So our first line should be to try to keep them and this is where flexibility is really important."
Seriously, something has got to give. Do you want well adjusted youths that translate to future productivity or do you just want to focus on current productivity and milk the women for all their worth? Do you want a healthy family unit with a mother doing what a mother can do best or just a person to bear a child aka future economic producers (tt's assuming they don't become social problems in future)/ and reduce the dependency ratio (and THAT, is an assumption cos they may end up being state dependent without proper parental guidance)?
No doubt that there are a few stellar examples, but not EVERY woman can be a superwoman/supermom to have 2-3 kids and be out in the workforce maximising their economic value and "not let the huge investment in them go to waste." ( and Child -rearing has no economic value??? i CANNOT believe she made the above statement)
Honestly, i believe that there is a far greater value (both economically and socially speaking) for a woman to be able to dedicate time to child rearing than to be out in the workforce bringing in the extra money for the present. Both bring economic returns, but the former looks at returns over generations vs present value returns of the latter. Not to mention, this is a privileged option that only financially stable families can have; In poorer families, women HAVE to work, because of financial need.
I wonder why the government is not thrilled that there are educated women out there that ARE willing to dedicate their time training and teaching their children with what has already been "invested" in them instead of fulfilling material dreams and sacrificing time with children or having children for a "better standard of living/comforts in life". There is NO waste in child-rearing. In fact, the investment is simply being imparted to another generation of workers ,no, PEOPLE, male and female. IN fact, this investment is multiplied, because the value of character building in the process of knowledge transfer, is multiplied in the children's interactions with other people over the years. Parenting done well, can have a far greater multiplier effect than the one sole woman contributing to the economy now.
I am not saying that women shouldn't work after having children. Some women do better with having a balance of work and taking care of kids, some women do better doing just either one of them at different stages of their lives. I am saying that investing time to stay home and raise children is not an economic "waste of investment" and that the economic contributions of women staying in the workforce is NOT necessarily higher than staying home to raise kids from a longer term perspective.
My conclusion of the matter for Singaporean women: Have children because you want to and choose to stop work/start work because you know that is best for your family, not because of government policy (which i'm sure hardly any family does). Trust God and not the government to provide.
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