ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a range of state policies which regulate women's labour and family formation in order to understand how ethnicity, class and nationality are embedded in the practices and politics of work and caregiving. It argues that the Singapore state has been successful in its goal of limiting state responsibility for providing institutionalised care by drawing on the interconnected discourses of Asian family values and individual responsibility. The inevitable pressure points produced by the lived realities of managing the work/care nexus have been relieved by a reliance on cheap, unskilled migrant labour. Singapore's industrialisation policies also prompted a significant increase in women's labour force participation. From a policy perspective, childcare has attracted a far greater level of scrutiny than eldercare in Singapore. The main family planning policies, implemented via the Singapore Family Planning and Population Board (SFPPB), were aimed at encouraging people to marry later, to delay having their first child and to 'Stop at Two'.
