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Dear A.S.S. Editor
Harvard professor said that giving extra maternity and childcare leave to women would never help in raising fertility rates, but instead leads to reinforcing the “gendered division of labour” in the household, where women stay at home to do housework and take care of the children while men work.
This will also leads to employers bias against hiring women, especially mothers. No need for the professor to come out and say this. For one thing, to increase fertility rate in Singapore, prices needs to be more affordable. Child care centers, prices of milk powder, diapers, all expensive, like that how to have children? Another thing, employers already have this mindset, that mothers will be more problematic when it comes to work time, compared to fathers. This happens in Asia, and of course Singapore, cannot escape from this. Thus, this mindset need to be changed first, before more women are open to raising kids.
How about increasing the paternity leave and extending more childcare leave to the men too. It will be a start towards eliminating this mindset.
Joe Tan
A.S.S. Contributor
