My gahmen is always asking us not to put off starting a family, at 1 point trying to promote work life balance, encouraging us to go home earlier to spend time with loves one and for our case- Make babies.
Many of my peers heed their advice and gave birth, we did too except that we didn't manage to keep the baby (which my mum blames it on my being too stressful at work).
Recently as Mr Love hopped to his 2nd job in 3months, I realised there is no work life balance to speak of. He moved on to a higher position but in return spend most of his waking time during weekdays slogging away at work. Higher position is essential since it equates to higher pay which will make starting a family more comfortable and affordable.
To reach home at 8pm nowadays is a miracle. Having dinner together is as difficult as seeing Lee Min Ho upclose when he came to Singapore the other day. Making babies? The mood is as good as asking both of us to work overtime.
Now the only conversation time is during his quick dinner which I will have to prepare when he informs me that he got on to the cab. By the time he finished dinner, rest a while, take a bath we are both ready to hit the sack and sleep almost immediately. It's tiring for him and for me who is in charge of his nightly dinner.
We shudder to think about how to cope when our little one comes along. Who will have to be in charge of rushing back home to fetch the baby from nanny or child care. Who will have the energy to take care of the baby at night etc etc. Being in the accounting field means we don't take uncalculated risks. So the idea of telling us everything will work out when the little one comes along is all crap to us. The end vedict is I tried to stay on to my job for as long as I could as Mr love still need some time to adjust to his new enivironment and see whether he would be able to leave earlier on non peak seasons.
So dear gahmen, while urging us to quickly reproduce for the sake of future Singapore (or so you claimed) why don't you try working on the issue of balancing our work and family life? I see you telling us to think about the trade offs when we wanted work life balance telling us that competitors are out to steal our lunch.
But then again, did you stop in your track and think whoever let the competitors into my country to steal my lunch? You wanted us to produce more babies but yet told us to work harder and longer during work and not dream of having work life balance. So, you expect my kids to grow up on their own, feed and clean themselves, walk/crawl home at 7pm from childcare centres?
By work life balance, I did not mean less stress but yes I need more free time. By free time, I don't mean to take work home so that I can get off work on the dot or to worry about the things I need to do tomorrow by going off on the dot today. I mean I can really get off work and go enjoy a good dinner with my hubby and maybe after that we will be in the mood to make babies.
It's like a rat race everyday for the 2 of us and many more couples like us. Look into the root cause of the problem please, not by asking us to play our part and live with whatever situations we are facing. Truth to be told, this is not the Singapore I would like to bring my child to for it would be more stressful for him or her in future as compared to us now.
Work life balance will come one day when you are not obsessed with our GDP, world rankings and competitiveness. But I guess that day will never come in my era.
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