Women, as their age climbs towards the dreaded 30, can hear the sound of their biological clock going louder but slower. As one of my classmates once told me, she did not see the point of a long relationship (she has never been in a relationship, H, L or B), but rather she expected herself to meet someone SUITABLE and get married within two years and commence procreation.
In local Singaporean girl context, this means that she more often than not, starts planning the ROM and traditional wedding less than one year into the relationship (Singaporeans, particularly the Chinese, follow this really stupid trend of blowing their wallets up at hosting their wedding banquet at a four to five star hotel ballroom. The industry is grateful.).
This means that the focus of such a relationship is not love, but children. A thirty something woman knows that she has to start quickly or risk her or her future children's ill health as an older first mother. She also knows that men who are geared to the same biological objective, will not choose them over a fertile twenty-something. Woe betide the sophisticated well-to-do forty something woman. She hears the clock even as loud human traffic flows and ebbs around her. She swiftly switches to matchmaking, because that is the best way to find a man who is committed and interested, like her, in having children.
She meets someone the agency and she later, deem suitable and they start a relationship. Knowing they are not getting younger, they marry quickly and immediately try for a child. If they are not successful they try religious, scientific methods to help them along.
They have the child they craved. Around three years since they met. But this will trigger the cracks in the relationship. No longer distracted by the excitement of the wedding and impending arrival of the firstborn, they settle into a pattern where if they do not continue to be attached and committed to raising their children, they will notice that the other half's faults more and more. He doesn't pick up after himself. She only has time for the child. He is spending too much time on the computer and not helping with the housework. She starts having headaches in bed.
Since their love is superficial, in comparison to their love to the fruit of their loins, it is difficult to remember why they fell in love. They "fell in love" because it was time to do so and they happen to share the same one thought at the same time, which was to procreate. But now that they have achieved their biological mission, there is no guarantee that they need to be responsible enough to ensure that their children grow up with both loving parents. Modern society has made it possible that single parenthood is no longer a taboo as it used to be. A single parent is now seen as one of the norms and while the parents think that it is perfectly alright to be apart and raise a child in a happier single household, instead of an angry, tense two-parent household, the child grows up feeling the deficiency somehow, which manifests itself in terrible or undesirable consequences later.
Very coincidentally, Daily Mail ran an article called "How women in their 30s put having a baby before love". Sobering but true, it reflects the modern woman's psyche towards men and babies.
In local Singaporean girl context, this means that she more often than not, starts planning the ROM and traditional wedding less than one year into the relationship (Singaporeans, particularly the Chinese, follow this really stupid trend of blowing their wallets up at hosting their wedding banquet at a four to five star hotel ballroom. The industry is grateful.).
This means that the focus of such a relationship is not love, but children. A thirty something woman knows that she has to start quickly or risk her or her future children's ill health as an older first mother. She also knows that men who are geared to the same biological objective, will not choose them over a fertile twenty-something. Woe betide the sophisticated well-to-do forty something woman. She hears the clock even as loud human traffic flows and ebbs around her. She swiftly switches to matchmaking, because that is the best way to find a man who is committed and interested, like her, in having children.
She meets someone the agency and she later, deem suitable and they start a relationship. Knowing they are not getting younger, they marry quickly and immediately try for a child. If they are not successful they try religious, scientific methods to help them along.
They have the child they craved. Around three years since they met. But this will trigger the cracks in the relationship. No longer distracted by the excitement of the wedding and impending arrival of the firstborn, they settle into a pattern where if they do not continue to be attached and committed to raising their children, they will notice that the other half's faults more and more. He doesn't pick up after himself. She only has time for the child. He is spending too much time on the computer and not helping with the housework. She starts having headaches in bed.
Since their love is superficial, in comparison to their love to the fruit of their loins, it is difficult to remember why they fell in love. They "fell in love" because it was time to do so and they happen to share the same one thought at the same time, which was to procreate. But now that they have achieved their biological mission, there is no guarantee that they need to be responsible enough to ensure that their children grow up with both loving parents. Modern society has made it possible that single parenthood is no longer a taboo as it used to be. A single parent is now seen as one of the norms and while the parents think that it is perfectly alright to be apart and raise a child in a happier single household, instead of an angry, tense two-parent household, the child grows up feeling the deficiency somehow, which manifests itself in terrible or undesirable consequences later.
Very coincidentally, Daily Mail ran an article called "How women in their 30s put having a baby before love". Sobering but true, it reflects the modern woman's psyche towards men and babies.
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