Latest TODAY column is: Responsible Breeding
Excerpt:
Last night, my four-month-old son, Isaac, smiled at me. My wife says that he seems to smile more when he sees me, so I must have a funny face. Mom is “Dinner”, and Dad is “Entertainment”. A kid cannot get a better deal than this.
I’d like to believe that it is because he finds the “ang-koo-koo”, and assorted baby sounds I make a witty and humourous form of social commentary. Or perhaps he is amused by my ironic take on the day’s news, and my clever use of parody, diminution and extended metaphor to describe the latest episode of Today in Parliament.
But it is probably my funny faces that make him laugh.
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Full column:
Responsible Breeding
Last night, my four-month-old son, Isaac, smiled at me. My wife says that he seems to smile more when he sees me, so I must have a funny face. Mom is “Dinner”, and Dad is “Entertainment”. A kid cannot get a better deal than this.
I’d like to believe that it is because he finds the “ang-koo-koo”, and assorted baby sounds I make a witty and humourous form of social commentary. Or perhaps he is amused by my ironic take on the day’s news, and my clever use of parody, diminution and extended metaphor to describe the latest episode of Today in Parliament.
But it is probably my funny faces that make him laugh.
When I look upon his cherubic face, my heart is warmed by the fact I have fulfilled my duty to the state and to my parents. I’d hate to be seen as irresponsible or unfilial. And I certainly would not want to be penalised with any “Preventive Eldercare Account” that may be implemented to make irresponsible non-child bearers pay for the costs of looking after their needs in old age.
MP Dr Ong Seh Hong (Aljunied GRC) convinced me of this. I can see how not having children can be “irresponsible”, since you should have children to look after you in your old age, and not the state.
I am not quite sure how it works when the children you produce grow up to be a bunch of useless good-for-nothings who do not plan to look after you, or they grow up to become criminals or a disabled burden to the state, but I am sure the idea in general is sound.
Personally, I do not think this “Preventive Eldercare Account” penalty goes far enough. I think single people who do not marry should also be so penalised. Make it a law that single people must cover all their colleagues who are parents when they have to go on urgent child-related leave. In fact, we should flog those who do not procreate by 30. That will teach them not to respect traditional Asian values.
Make healthy single men donate to the sperm bank and healthy women give up their ovaries to the ovary bank so that others who want to have kids but cannot will have a chance. We will return the ovaries when the owners want it back to reproduce. And we can call the depository the Proxy Ovary and Sperm Bank, or POSB for short.
Let’s go further. Make condoms a controlled item. Like chewing gum. They are quite similar, really. Both are chewy and come (oops) in different flavours.
I even think that if you are old, and you have no children to look after you, you should just migrate to a cheaper country or maybe plan an early and permanent “retirement” from life. It is only your own bloody fault you did not produce descendents.
The word “descendents” reminds me of Chinese philosopher Mencius, whom Dr Ong quoted. Mencius said, “bu xiao you san, wu hou wei da”, or “of the three instances of unfilial behaviour, not having descendants is the worst”.
Because I have a D7 in Chinese as a Second Language, I did some further research. My copy of the comic version of The Analects and The Sayings of Mencius (English edition) helped a lot. Some scholars, I found out, translate it as “of the three instances of unfilial behaviour, not having sons is the worst”.
So you see, I have more than done my duty. All of you should follow my example and shoot for boys (I mean that metaphorically, of course).
I still have not figured out what to do with my firstborn, a girl, though. My wife and I love her a great deal, of course, but she does not quite fall into the Mencius definition of “descendant”, since the Chinese believe that the sons carry the father’s name.
Were we “irresponsible” to have her then? Must I pay an extra tax for her too?
I will tell you something else that bothers me. My daughter, Faith, may not grow up to help look after us in our old age. Officially, she is classified as having “Delayed Development”. Unofficially (because she is too young to be diagnosed completely), she has Autism Spectrum Disorder or ASD, and she is undergoing intervention. ASD is a developmental disorder that affects a person's ability to communicate, understand language, play, and interact with others.
So in our old age, we may need to do the looking after. It is hard to say how she will turn out. For now, we can only give her the best care and therapies we can afford, and let love and prayer take care of the rest.
Some of you may ask, why did you have another child then, since there may a chance the next child may also have ASD? Isn’t having one child with special needs more than enough kid for any sane couple?
Ah, because I felt it was my national duty. That’s what I will tell you publicly anyway.
Secretly, our reasons are less patriotic. We had another because we love kids, and we wanted Faith to enjoy the love of siblings. She is in her own little world a lot, so we thought this might make her world a little bigger.
Along the way, these two kids, one normal and one special, have also made our worlds bigger than the sum of our selfish individual hearts.
Now, we greet every milestone Isaac reaches with relief, and every milestone Faith reaches with inappropriate joy. We almost organised a neighbourhood party when Faith first learned to point, at age two.
My wife and I do not know much about things like buying private property, or seeing the world, or buying a bigger car. We do not know if we are fulfilling the national quota. We do not know what it is like to live a life free of duty or expectations.
All we know is that we have kids to love, promises to keep, and miles to go before we sleep, and miles to go before we sleep.
mrbrown is the accidental author of a popular website that has been documenting the dysfunctional side of Singapore life since 1997. It is his hobby to take more than a week of his own annual leave every time his wife gives birth. So he agrees that paternity leave is wasted on men who will probably stay home and do nothing.
