Family / Work Life Balance

The last hope of a great family / work life balance faded away during the weekend as the last TOTO ticket was carefully scrutinised, and then dumped into the trash bin. Is it really that hard to achieve?

Wifey has only started going back to work for less than a week after maternity leave and we were "forced" to leave the boy at the in-law's place overnight because of work related reasons:

1. Meeting at 8:30am in the morning, too early to fetch the boy from home to in-law's.
(A whole bunch of people turned up ... and mostly wasted their time)

2. Meeting until 9:00pm at night, too late to bring the boy home.
(Probably so people can claim for their taxi fare home)


Recently, there has been talk about raising the declining birth rate. I just heard on the news that Singapore's current figure stands at 1.29. A quick search on the Internet revealed articles in 2004 at which the birth rate was 1.25. I'm not sure how accurate these figures are but a 0.04 increase over 4 years is hardly encouraging.

Personally, I think $$$ may not be the factor for most couples when it comes to having children. Time is more important. Working environments and working habits and expectations of bosses need to be changed.

Anyway, both of us work in government-related industries. Wifey has a better deal from her HR which offers an encouraging pro-family/baby package, but unfortunately, mine doesn't even offer a single day of paternity leave ...