From a macroeconomic perspective, this is a disaster. However, I cannot fault the Thais for choosing the child-free path or delaying pregnancy. You see, unlike in more developed countries in Scandinavia, the Thai government (or governments in Southeast Asia in general) do not provide structural support for families to encourage having children. In Europe, particularly the Scandinavian countries, they have free healthcare (giving birth is almost free or affordable), public schools are excellent, and maternity leaves are years-long. Those things are unheard of in Southeast Asia.
The problem with raising children in this part of the world is unaffordability, especially in capital cities where the jobs are. The village that raises the children (“it takes a village to raise a child”) doesn’t exist in cities—unless you’re lucky to have your extended family with you to help with child-rearing. Middle class families are trapped between the need to have two working parents and having one parent to stay at home to take care of the kids. With rising cost of everything, especially private school education, many couples are opting to go child-free. Public schools in this part of the world are crap, except for specialized public schools that are hard to get into. The comments section of this news feature by CNA reveal that. Many Southeast Asians chimed in, agreeing that this is not only a Thailand problem.
Alongside that are the pressures that the “sandwich generation” face; it’s really hard to think about having a child of your own to raise. The sandwich generation are the children who are trapped between supporting ageing parents and raising their own families. This social phenomenon is caused by, among other things, the lack of adequate pension system so the children are forced to become the pension source of their parents/in-laws until they die. In the Philippines and Indonesia, it is very common for eldest children to bear the burden of being the breadwinner of the family and sending siblings to school while the parents have completely stopped working. These children could not even support themselves, how can they even think of getting married and having children?
Another problem is the very low wages in Southeast Asia—these haven’t caught up with inflation for decades. Our governments are adamant in keeping our countries affordable for foreign investors so we can replace China as the world’s factory. How can anyone raise a family with PHP 10,000 – PHP 15,000 a month?
Even I was terrified of having children. I keep telling people I wasn’t ready because being a journalist is a vow of poverty, whether I like it or not. My mom told me, “one can never be ready when it comes to having children but we managed.” With that, I jumped off a cliff and prayed that I will survive…
And speaking of Thailand, the latest political upheaval brought in a new face but the same people. Thaksin’s daughter takes over and there goes the circus. Very Southeast Asia. This will further divide the country. But then, as one of my Bangkok sources told me, it’s business as usual in Thailand. “We have been through many coup d’etats that it has become commonplace and so we continue to plod on.”
These are some of the universal themes played over and over in Southeast Asia and only we fellow Southeast Asians can truly understand each other. My Korean manager couldn’t understand the story she was editing, why banks/lending companies must go to the provinces to offer motorcycle loans. She doesn’t understand that it’s a very big business in Southeast Asia; motorcycles are the main means of transportation in far-flung rural areas, be it in Medan in Indonesia to Da Nang in Vietnam. Our infrastructure is very broken and motorcycles are the only means to private (and public) mobility in rural and urban areas in this region.
What I’m trying to say is such events like the return to power by Thaksin (in the form of his daughter) is very much understood by Thailand’s neighbors.
