My 3.5 year old son randomly asked me, “why does …….. (friend) get new toys all the time?” last night at dinner. I stumbled through my answer, trying to find a way to communicate to a young child the concepts of bribery, being spoiled, privilege, but obviously not being able to capture this into a good lesson for him. Luckily for us, he then mentioned “(friend) does naughty things all the time. I don’t get things when I am naughty”. Either our son is humble and wise beyond his years, or we have brainwashed him so much into the idea of right/wrong and good/bad that he knows what is expected of him. Probably a mix of both.
I’ve been stewing on writing something about privilege since moving to Singapore. Last night’s comment really struck a nerve in me, partly because I know the friend and how much his parents fear creating healthy boundaries (candy everyday, missing teaching moments, giving in to every request), and partly because the experience of being a professional expat in Singapore usually means that the parents are high income earners with all the trappings of money masking the simple and foundational life skills that the wealthy often do not instill. I have felt weird being a part of this by virtue of our social networks, but also strongly disagreeing with how some, if not a large majority of professional expats, raise their children in this utopian society.
A bit of facts to help explain what kind of expats are brought into this country. To gain an Employment Pass (EP) for a foreigner, which is designated for Professionals, Managers, and Executives in Singapore, the income related requirement and minimum salary is benchmarked to the top 1/3 of local earners and indexed also according to age/experience/industry of the candidate. As you get older, the minimum salary requirements rise.
https://www.mom.gov.sg/passes-and-permits/employment-pass/eligibility#ep-qualifying-salary
This is important to know because our social network counterparts and their corresponding children tend to come from families of highly educated and skilled backgrounds. Because Singapore’s economy is largely built on bringing in top talent from around the world to build their competitive advantage in white collar professions, and with the lack of natural resources from limited land space, the professional expat population brings with it all the positives and negatives of upper middle or high class lifestyles. Singapore’s economy IS their people.
Back to my original point…… part of being American, and me, in general is an unending gripe with fairness, equality, privilege, blah blah blah. It’s actually quite annoying for myself as I can’t help but notice so many little differences and slights in the world. It’s hard for me to ignore that the vast majority of expats here have domestic helpers, essentially live-in workers who cook, clean, and take care of the children and the household. Its hard to ignore that parent A and parent B, with tertiary degrees and high incomes or standing in society don’t know how to cook food for themselves or wash a dish or do their own laundry. It’s hard to ignore that when Sunday comes around and the helpers have a designated day off, said parent’s are lost and overwhelmed by having to engage with their children (or child). It’s hard to ignore that some families have one helper for each child they have (yes, I have witnessed this on multiple occasions and yes, it looks as ridiculous as it sounds).
It’s also hard to ignore that most domestic helpers are often just warm bodies to make sure the children do not get hurt or into too much trouble. Most of the time, I see helpers contributing to the spoiled-ness, spoon feeding their four year old or older kids, cleaning up after them, carrying them when they can surely walk once in a while. I don’t blame them for this, their job is to take care of the house and create an alliance or likeability with the child, otherwise they would be out of a job. But these acts are often also extensions of the parent’s behavior toward their children, missing moments to raise children to be independent and responsible for themselves and to others.
Now, there is clearly an economic need for two working parents to have a live-in helper. “Affording” life in Singapore and the need for consistent childcare is a very real thing, a monumental jigsaw puzzle most Americans have to figure out all the time. But on the flip side of this, we know way too many expats (and some younger generation locals) who have grown up with this own arrangement as children themselves and see this as normal. For the boys, if they’re from local families, it is not until they do required National Service do they do their own laundry for the first time, or learn other basic life skills. Its not until they become parents do they have to confront what taking care of others looks like (apparently it’s a common thing for father’s here to be afraid to touch their babies or be involved in any of the childcare until they are older).
Most of the things I say here are loose connections, perhaps related or perhaps not-related to income, class, privilege, etc. But to my best hypotheses, gathered from conversations with parents, the children, and observations in-person, the downside of this wealthy society is the miss prioritization of life skills. When a 4-year old protests cleaning up their toys, it is normal, to an extent. When you give up and pick up after them every time, or bribe them with candy or toys, what lessons do they learn about responsibility? They learn the same lesson that wealthy adults have learned themselves, that others will pick up after them, that they are meant for more “important” tasks.
This doubly frustrates me when I see boys being so privileged and spoiled. I am a father to two boys, and I know how this track goes when boys, who will become men, are allowed to skirt the rules from a young age. There are generations of socialization and biology of being male that contributes to this which makes it all the more important that we start young with them to learn the basic tenets of care for ourselves (cleaning up, feeding ourselves, etc.) and care for others around us (saying sorry when you make a mistake, including others as friends, sharing, etc).
I know there are plenty of exceptions to my observations. I know that wealthy people everywhere in the world create systems that are advantageous to them without the corresponding return to the society that feeds their needs. I am a realist and recognize that there isn’t just all bad or good, that objectively life is about tradeoffs in almost every scenario. I have seen aspects of privilege and entitlement in various people I have known in America, but this is the first time I’ve been in a society that supports all these “ideal” systems for parents and families that results in these side effects. It should not be amazing that our child cleans up their toys or that at any one point in time the mother or father handles both children independently outside their home. We are not remarkable, the system of help in Singapore has somehow made us outliers.
I feel so very fortunate to have this opportunity to raise my children in Singapore. The country is clean, safe, and provides an excellent education for kids. A child can truly just grow up learning, and for us as a family of mixed-race heritage originating from countries close to here, this is a blessing for our kids to grow up having exposure to elements of their parent’s culture, without prejudice that they do not look or live like their peers. This is a far cry, in different ways for my wife and I, from what our environment told us about ourselves growing up in America. If only I can get past seeing the 5-year old sitting in a high chair watching cartoons on a tablet while his mother spoon feeds him his meal and gives him milk out of a baby bottle at a nice restaurant…..