\n<\/p>\n
Ms Lau acknowledged that the current state of the world may cause young people to have self-doubts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think all of us in this time and space feel the pressures of stress, work, lots of anxieties about what’s going to happen, anxieties about what the world is turning out to be \u2013 which looks nasty all round \u2013 and also you feel unsure about yourself whether you can really become the best version of yourself. If you can’t, then why would you have another new version of you?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
However, she said that the journey into partnership, marriage and then parenthood is \u201cextremely beautiful\u201d and comes with a \u201ccombination of heartache, sometimes tears \u2026 sometimes indescribable joy\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can’t put it in words, and I think it makes for such a great life adventure,\u201d said Ms Lau.<\/p>\n
She shared that when she meets elderly people in neighbourhoods and asks them what they think of most often, they tell her most of the time that they think about their children and wish they could see them in their childhood again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey never talk about their work, careers, their houses. Never,\u201d said Ms Lau.<\/p>\n
In her opening remarks, Ms Lau said that anything about family, parenthood and having children is “hugely personal” and that she did not like to talk about it as national policy.<\/p>\n
“Every time we talk about it as national policy, we are told, ‘don’t preach to young people what you want them to do, whether people are having children or not is personal, and it’s not something that the government should get involved in’,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Lau said that while she has gone through the joys of parenting, that does not mean that everybody will make the same choice, adding that it comes from her \u201cvery specific individual personal context\u201d.<\/p>\n
She added: “To me, actually if we didn’t have children anymore, then I shouldn’t be in this job, none of us should care anymore about topics like housing or the future or the environment, because there is no Singapore.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no point in all of this if we didn’t have a next generation or grandchildren come after us.<\/p>\n
“We might as well just say we’ll have a good life while we can, and then the future will figure itself out in whatever way people choose to do so. Then there’s no purpose and meaning in any of us in public service, because there’s no Singapore and there’s no future.”<\/p>\n
She said that shaping the future of Singapore society is something that drives many in government, adding that some people, particularly women, feel very deeply about the issue of family and parenting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Ms Lau acknowledged that the current state of the world may cause young people to have self-doubts. \u201cI think all of us in this time…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--K76hFNTT--\/c_crop,h_1125,w_2000,x_0,y_70\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/fl_relative,g_south_east,l_mediacorp:cna:watermark:2021-08:cna,w_0.1\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/10\/14\/ayt_2188.jpg?itok=Y6Qr_ONF","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4119,6993,4816,8237,20282,1244,311,4447,1451],"class_list":["post-92941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-employers","tag-flexible","tag-grants","tag-incentives","tag-jasmin","tag-jobs","tag-lau","tag-redesign","tag-work","wpcat-2-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/92942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}