SINGAPORE: A dystopian thought experiment about surrogacy and state-run child-rearing has sparked a heated debate online, with many Singaporeans reacting with horror and comparing the scenario to science fiction stories and some of history’s darkest social experiments.

The discussion began after netizen dinky.jojo posed a hypothetical question to local women: Would they accept a two-room flat at age 25 in exchange for carrying a child conceived through artificial insemination, with the understanding that they would not raise the child after birth?

Under the scenario, the woman would receive free neonatal check-ups but no allowance, would have to endure nine months of pregnancy, and the baby would then be handed over to a government-run system to be raised.

The idea quickly struck a nerve.

One commenter did not mince words, calling the proposal “disturbingly horrific.”

“So we are all just numbers on a spreadsheet, a KPI target to keep meaningless lines on graphs rising?” the commenter asked, “Really, are we just meant to be cogs in a machine that functions with the logic of a tumour?”

The commenter went on to speculate that such an idea would not be entirely out of character for some policymakers.

“The sad part is, I wouldn’t put it above a PAP scholar-bureaucrat with his mechanistic thinking and hyper-inflated sense of superiority to unironically propose this in a private memo,” they wrote, before adding: “we had the Graduate Mothers’ Scheme, after all, who knows what other abominations that we don’t know about yet?”

Others focused less on the political angle and more on the ethical implications.

“Ethical violation on so many levels,” one commenter wrote. They argued that the scenario reduced children to objects rather than human beings, saying the child was being viewed not as an individual but as something to be produced and managed.

Another commenter felt the proposal ignored the importance of family structures altogether. “The last thing we need is more children growing up with absent fathers. Plenty of them already,” they wrote.

Some comments took on a more cynical tone, with one person suggesting that participation rates would probably increase if money was added to the deal. “Put in an allowance and I know there will be people that will take it up honestly,” they wrote.

Others questioned whether the economics of the proposal even made sense.

“If the government really wanted to do a dystopian idea like this, they wouldn’t need to pay an exorbitant 2-room flat worth 350k to a local woman to do it,” one commenter argued, “Market rate for surrogacy in developing countries is in the 50k range.”

Another echoed the sentiment, writing: “If the government wanted to go that route. They could do it cheaper, faster and maybe better. Don’t even need to pay people a BTO. lol.”

Several netizens immediately thought of dystopian television and literature. “What in the black mirror,” one person wrote.

Another said the proposal “actually feels like a black mirror episode,” before joking that it might be more acceptable “if it’s a lab-grown baby and no one needs to be inseminated.”

One commenter drew an unexpected parallel with National Service. “So like NS?” they wrote, “At 18, the government offers free bed and food, little allowance in exchange for marching and charging up hills. For 2 years, our bodies goes through hell, and we are forced to eat army rations. Except we don’t get a choice and no one thinks this is dystopian.”

Some pointed to Canada’s residential schools and Romanian orphanages as examples of institutional systems that ended disastrously. Looking further back in history, one netizen cited the Ottoman Empire’s Devshirme system, in which boys were taken from their families and raised to serve the state. The commenter argued that while the Ottoman system produced capable soldiers and administrators, it did so by placing children in functioning households and communities rather than orphanages or barracks.

Others online are even more blunt, arguing that children need committed parents, not financial incentives.

“We need parents who will raise and care for their children,” they wrote, “Not money-hungry women looking for a quick payday and who see their own children as foreign objects.”

While the original post was framed as a hypothetical question, many commenters treated it as a window into broader anxieties about social engineering, the role of the state in family life, and Singapore’s plunging birth rate.

Singapore’s birth rate has fallen to its lowest level on record, with the resident Total Fertility Rate (TFR) dropping to just 0.87 in 2025, down from 0.97 in 2024. The figure sits far below the replacement rate of 2.1 needed for a population to replace itself without immigration.

The decline has been accompanied by a sharp drop in the number of births, with just 27,529 resident babies born in 2025, the lowest annual figure since records began.

At the same time, Singapore’s population is ageing rapidly, with one in five citizens now aged 65 or older. Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong has described the trend as an “existential challenge” for the country.

In response, the Government announced a new Marriage and Parenthood (M&P) Reset Workgroup in April 2026. Chaired by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Indranee Rajah, the inter-agency group has been tasked with reviewing policies and developing what officials describe as a “whole-of-society” approach to supporting marriage and parenthood.

The workgroup will examine issues that Singaporeans frequently cite as barriers to having children, including the financial cost of raising a family, work-life balance, housing, healthcare, childcare, preschool education and workplace support. It is expected to engage employers, community organisations and members of the public before producing a full report in early 2027.

This article (Netizens horrified by proposal offering flat in exchange for carrying baby for state) first appeared on The Independent Singapore News.

SINGAPORE: In a lengthy interview, Jeremy Tan, who contested in GE2025 as an independent candidate at Mountbatten SMC, talked about a wide range of issues, including why he entered politics, public housing, and what seems to be everyone’s favourite topic of the moment: the record-low birth rate,

On the June 15 (Monday) episode of the BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech podcast, Mr Tan, an entrepreneur, argued that housing, inequality, and political complacency, not immigration or culture wars, are the real threats to the future of the city-state.

While he lost his bid to the ruling People’s Action Party’s Gho Sze Kee, a fellow political newbie, he ended up with over 36% of the vote and grew popular with many Singaporeans.

He shared his insights on last year’s GE, underlining that he believes Singapore needs stronger political competition rather than less, telling hosts Jeremy Au and Shiyan Koh, “I think the system itself requires a high level of competition. If team two and team three are ready, your team one will always be good… But at the same time, team one will never be ready unless team two and team three are pushing them to be ready.”

He also had interesting things to say about where opposition parties should concentrate their efforts on fielding candidates at Single Member Constituencies (SMCs) instead of spreading themselves too thin at Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs). He argued that doing so would give people a chance to prove their competencies first and therefore gain voters’ trust.

As for boosting Singapore’s birth rate, Mr Tan claimed that the fertility crisis is, in reality, a housing crisis. If housing is made affordable, people will have more children.

“Don’t capitalise HDBs. I think that’s the issue. A flat in Tengah just sold for $2.8 million for 1,200 square feet. That’s crazy. I used to go to the army at the Tengah area. There were just cemeteries behind there. I don’t know why people go there,” he said, adding that if a home is available to Singaporeans for S$200,000, they would take it and start having families.

“It’s the financial risk that deters them,” he added, also saying, “You cannot capitalise properties so much that the basic cost of being a family is compromised.”

If HDB flats are seen as investments, this would mean that Singaporeans would face longer mortgages as well as larger financial commitments, something that young people may understandably be reluctant to do, while in the past, in comparison, they could pay off homes relatively quickly and start families earlier. Today’s conditions have given rise to delayed marriage, delayed childbearing, and fewer children overall, he argued.

Watch Mr Tan’s interview in full here. /TISG

Read also: Singaporean man says he’s confused why people keep saying public housing is ‘unaffordable for low-income individuals’

This article (Ex-independent candidate Jeremy Tan says Singapore’s fertility crisis is a housing crisis) first appeared on The Independent Singapore News.

SINGAPORE: The fertility rate of Singapore, which reached a historic low of 0.87 in 2025, has become an issue of national importance that the Government is doing something about, such as forming the Marriage & Parenthood Reset workgroup.

Singaporeans have also been tackling the issue online, such as when a local Reddit user initiated a discussion as to whether setting the workweek at a maximum of 40 hours would serve to help solve the problem.

Earlier this week, u/6fac3e70 wrote that Mexico had capped the number of working hours at 40 per week and employers were told not to cut salaries. 

They wrote that they have one child but work between 45 and 48 hours a week, adding, “not being able to spend enough time with family and being tired from work are dampening factors for more kids. Beyond the dollars and cents, it’s time and energy that money can’t buy.”

They wondered if the official Taskforce is considering this as one of the reasons for the low birth rate, but added that based on a self-assessment tool from the Ministry of Manpower, managers or professionals cannot “expect the law to protect you in terms of the number of hours you work” to the detriment of the number of hours spent with the family.

“Isn’t it pretty obvious why and does a task force really need to be set up to find out what we all already know?

Capping hours would mean you’ll need to hire more people to do the same job, and so that would even boost employment,” the post author added.

Historic low TFR

Earlier this year, Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong said that with Singapore’s citizen population growing by only 0.7 in 2025, it’s possible that by the early 2040s, the citizen population will begin to shrink.

In 2023 and 2024, the total fertility rate was at 0.97. Ideally, the TFR should be around 2.1 for developed countries in order to maintain a stable population. This value is known as the replacement level.

The last year that Singapore’s TFR was at 2.1 was in 1975. Since 1976, it has been below replacement level. DPM Gan added that resident births have declined to around 27,500, which is the lowest on record. Importantly, marriage rates have also dropped, and married couples are having fewer children or none at all.

“If no new measures are taken, our citizen population will start to shrink by the early part of the 2040s,” he said, though he added that “we cannot give up.”

What commenters are saying

Reddit users who commented on the post tended to agree, saying that they could definitely use more work-life balance.

“If MY and other countries can do so 40 hours, why can’t we? We’re inefficient with our time use anyway, moving to 40 will force efficiency rather than have staff out on 2-hour lunch breaks and spreading work throughout the day,” wrote one, adding that they’re most efficient the first four hours of the workday. 

“It’s 2026. There are still some of us working 5.5 or 6-day weeks, btw,” a commenter added.

Another Reddit user, however, wrote, “Work hours are not even the issue now. It’s the job uncertainty in general…

We are all already in debt with our BTO / resale, renovation, and student loans. A lot of us still have to take care of our ageing parents’ medical bills. We can be retrenched tomorrow with zero benefits.

We are not like other countries, where we can just move out of the city into a cheaper area. We are stuck in the most expensive city in the world for our whole lives. There is no way we can have kids.” 

“I am guessing only certain jobs would benefit. For example, teachers are notorious for bringing work home and continuing to mark over the weekends. So a hard cap on working hours is meaningless if overall workload doesn’t change,” a commenter pointed out, adding, “I am still for a 4-day work week. Way more tangible, and we also save in other aspects, such as travelling time. Plus, it’s also easier to plan for short getaways.” /TISG

Read also: Childcare job postings in Singapore see steepest decline in February as fertility rate hits record low 

This article (Singaporeans debate whether shorter workweeks could encourage more people to have children) first appeared on The Independent Singapore News.