Modern Married Couples’ Concept Of Family Changing
Maybe it’s the tidal shift in gender roles, or the rising cost of living in Singapore, or perhaps it’s the movement away from popular family dramas, towards the glamourising of free-spirited, love-seeking, hedonistic people through the media.
There’s no way to know for sure what’s the reason our culture changes, but it’s probably somewhere in the nexus of all the factors mentioned above. Culture is very difficult to quantify, but the symptoms of culture change are slightly more recognisable.
Anybody At Home?
The slightly patriarchal stereotype of breadwinner and housewife is losing it’s dominance. According to the 2015 General Household Survey, the proportion of married dual-career couples increased from 47.1% in 2010 to 53.8% in 2015, an increase of 5.7%
This means that more women are leaving the house and joining the income generation club, which leaves a void in terms of home-care. Housekeeping can be as taxing as a full-time job. After all, chores don’t magically do themselves, there’s someone doing them, and that someone is often unnoticed and under-appreciated.
With more income at their disposal, couples often hire domestic helpers to solve the housework conundrum. What is interesting is that many homeowners we talk to don’t totally outsource every aspect of housework. Couples will find a way to apportion chores among themselves, and then hire a part-timer to help them clear chores that they have no time for. This allows them to be cost-efficient while improving their work-life balance.
No Children, No Worries.
According to a Straits Times report, more couples seem to like the idea of not having children. Over the past 2 decades, the number of women who have stayed childless have almost tripled, from 4.2% in 1994 to 11.2% in 2014.
This trend is probably a result of a combination of rising perceived cost of raising a child, as well as cultural norms changing, where having children is no longer a ‘must’. Throughout history, one of the more pragmatic reasons for having kids was to have children who would labour for the parent when the parent could no longer work. Today however, there could be a reversal of perception in urban settings, where the raising of a child is seen as impractical.
Many couples cite privacy and freedom as reasons not to have children. In the same vein, home-owning couples without children that we’ve interacted with suggest that for the same reasons, they don’t want full-time live-in maids either.
Conclusion
I personally have an interest in how modern culture is being shaped by media. I actually don’t believe that these numbers have come about solely based on practical considerations like money and cost of living. While cost of living is fundamental to our decision making, what we are being ‘taught’ by the media is changing what we thought was fundamental to our lives. The portrayal of women and youth in popular media is changing everyday and with it, our belief systems.
