A Singapore working mother’s three-item wish list for Budget 2023

WHEN I first heard that a new suite of measures to better support parenthood will be announced at this year’s Budget speech, I knew I needed to chime in even if it might be too late to matter (yes, I’m aware the speech will be delivered tomorrow).

To make this list meaningful, I cast my net into my 200-plus-strong mummy WhatsApp group, and looped in my modest Instagram following for good measure. Here are three top asks borne of our collective insight, arranged by popularity:

1) Promoting flexi-work and flexible hours

This was a big one – could the government improve incentives for companies to implement flexi-work and flexi-hour policies?

Incentives should only be provided to companies that do this meaningfully. Flexi-work arrangements for parents don’t just mean allowing one fixed day for working from home – it means truly being flexible. It requires a lot of understanding and trust on the part of a manager, and a strong working relationship between parents and their bosses.

A typical working parent might need to leave the office early (sometimes as early as 5.30pm) to travel to their child’s preschool or daycare to make a 7pm cut-off time, or to get them home for a family dinner and bedtime. This same parent may also need to arrive a little later to drop their children off in school. A breastfeeding mother may need to take two or three periods during the work day to pump milk – although frankly this would be akin to her colleagues taking smoke breaks.

This has also been repeated ad nauseam – the Covid pandemic has taught a vast majority of us that our jobs can quite easily be performed from home, and for a working parent, at least, it may be more productive for us to work from home more. It has also given us opportunities to explore other work models – four-day work week, anyone?

Here at The Business Times, I greatly appreciate my bosses’ enlightened decision to allow our entire newsroom to move in and out of the office as we deem necessary – one could work from home entirely, at the office entirely, or anything in between. No regularity is needed either, as long as your work gets done when it needs to be, and you are present at meetings you’re needed for – be they in person or remotely, as determined by their organisers.

Certainly, not every workplace can be as flexible as ours, but sometimes a shift of mindset – which I acknowledge can be impressively difficult – is all that’s needed. It would greatly improve many struggling parents’ lives, and strengthen their commitment to their work.

2) Topping up our kids’ Child Development Accounts (CDAs)

A quick, targeted and easy way to directly help all of us who don’t have family support to care for our children while we work.

A large number of parents who work send their children to full-day infant care and preschool, and the government currently disburses a few grand – nice! – into our CDAs pretty much once we open them after registering our babies’ births.

The CDA, for many of us, pays for paediatrician visits, forehead thermometers, and most crucially, infant and childcare fees.

If you’re lucky and can find a spot at an affordable HDB-void-deck-style centre near your home, you’re looking at up to S$800 or so per month for infant care after subsidies, but if you’re less lucky, or for whatever reason find yourself sending your child to a more upmarket outfit, expect monthly fees to top S$1,000, or even S$2,000.

You can also, therefore, imagine how quickly S$8,000 evaporates, sometimes before even the first year of your child’s life has passed.

3) More childcare/maternity/paternity leave, or shared MC cover with our children

This, I acknowledge, is a toughie. But if you have an idea how often kids fall sick from daycare, you’ll understand why it’s a perennial ask from parents.

To ensure that non-parent co-workers aren’t holding the bag at the end of all the sick days, perhaps this needs to be remodelled to family care leave that can benefit more colleagues.

Initiatives like the shared maternity leave scheme help on the paternity leave front – with my second child, I donated two weeks to my husband so he could spend a bit more time helping out. Much has already been said about how giving more paternity leave will go some way in rebalancing the skew in parental responsibility between fathers and mothers, and help more mothers to return to the workforce and pursue their career advancement.

A few mum friends mooted the idea of children’s medical certificates (MCs) covering one of their working parents – where if a child falls sick enough to require an MC to stay home, one of the parents will be allowed to use it to stay home.

Some organisations permit this, but will deduct from the parent’s MC quota. Perhaps there is also room to consider permitting a parent to work from home on days like this.

More requests – because there always will be

• Equal or higher childcare subsidies for families with stay-home mothers, given that these households are often on a single income.
• While we’re on the topic of stay-home mums, can the government consider additional support for them?
• Additional milk powder/diaper/baby basics help for parents who really need it.
• Better pay for infant care and preschool teachers.
• Improve nursing room facilities and availability in public places, and perhaps also consider weaving these into workplace guidelines.
• For parents of older children, smaller primary school class sizes (since our cohorts are getting smaller, anyway?).

I’ll be the first to admit that my headline is a misleading one, but opportunities to put our requests out must be seized – and I hope I did so meaningfully. FYCP (for your consideration please), Marriage & Parenthood policymakers :)