Seven years ago, my husband and I welcomed our first baby in the place we were both born – Singapore. First-time motherhood is difficult anywhere, but there seem to be better places than others to cross this threshold.
In Singapore, it is common practice to hire a confinement nanny for at least the first four post-partum weeks. Ah Qiu, a round-faced, rosy-cheeked sixty-year-old with grown-up children, stayed with us for eight weeks. She took the night feeds, cooked recovery meals and herbal soups, taught us how to bathe a newborn, chatted with me on those busy-but-bored early newborn days but knew when to excuse herself when private conversations arose between my husband and me.
We were her fiftieth family. Though she was no healthcare professional, she knew what we should worry less about (almost everything), and what we should perhaps get a second opinion on. Before Ah Qiu was picked up by her grown children, leaving a trail of tears (mostly mine), she made sure that she trained a domestic helper from the Philippines to help us transition. We texted for years to come.
After my sixteen weeks of paid maternity leave, I was back working on strategy and policy in the Prime Minister’s Office. “Perhaps we could have it all”, I thought. With grandparents, helpers and friends all within a 20 minute drive, we could be present with our baby, grow our two careers, and continue to have some semblance of a social life – date nights once in a while, friends coming over, heading out for late night suppers in a city that never slept.
“Perhaps we could have it all; but do I want to have it all?” This question sometimes crept up on me as I kissed chubby cheeks goodbye each morning. What if I wanted to take time off from the 8am to 8pm Singapore work schedule? With all the help available, it did not seem like an option to my employer, family or culture.
In any case, the question felt like too much of a luxury to entertain.
Parenting in the United States: Life constrained
Then came our move to the San Francisco Bay Area when our baby was five months old. My husband was enrolled in a PhD program at Stanford. Still high on the invulnerability and support of our twenties, we had no doubt we could get through this with a stronger family and individual careers.
Any mother in the US can probably guess the outcome.
While a highly dedicated father and husband (one of the most responsible you will ever meet), my husband worked every moment he could – day and night, weekends and holidays – for the next five years. PhDs demand everything, in return for little pay. At the same time, we were living in the most expensive place in the United States.
I quickly took on the role of primary caregiver and breadwinner, working my schedules and career choices around what would bring financial stability for the family and time flexibility so that I could be the back-up caregiver during frequent flus and colds. Within two years, we had another beautiful baby, and I had taken on two jobs covering four time-zones. 6am calls and 11pm calls were my norm. Sleep cycles were off and I was burning out, but at least I could be present for my babies during the day.
On paper, it looked beautiful. “How do you manage everything?” my Singaporean friends would ask with admiration.
But all was not well beneath the surface. My heart was torn. I had come to the US with personal dreams to jump from the government to the technology start-up world. Repeatedly, I would near the threshold, then back away – too much risk, too little guaranteed cash, too little flexibility to be present for my children.
My husband tried his hardest to make room for my dreams. During my coach training programme, the whole family flew to Colorado; he watched our toddler for five days so that I could be with her in the evenings while pursuing training in the day.
Raising children alone in the US made us struggle with constraints for the first time. With no caregiving buffer, one person’s goals came at the expense of the other. Our marriage was a series of mutual bargains, and I felt I was bearing the weight of trade-offs.
Frustrated one day, I threw a bright orange plastic cup of iced coffee down our Stanford apartment staircase. The bitterness crystallized: for all of our lives we were equal. Of all people, we should crack the code to marriage equality. We met at Princeton, where we were both sponsored fully on Singapore Government scholarships. We both landed in the top 1% of the class. When it came to career milestones, I was arguably more successful.
Now, after children, I was in the United States because of him, away from my networks and community in early motherhood, supporting his PhD dreams, taking on primary responsibilities for care, and putting my own life and dreams on hold.
Entering the real (more dangerous) question
Where do we turn when we come face-to-face with constraints, disappointments and our own vulnerability? I started by externalizing my anger, severely envying Singaporean friends who dropped off their children with the grandparents for a weekend away. Demanding more of my husband, I snuck in half-jokes about how he owed me for the rest of his life. I passionately researched systems of misogyny in workplaces and marriages, educating anyone who cared to hear about it.
There was something important in acknowledging the truth: women work much harder to fit into a world that revolved around men for generations before we were born. I recognized my propensity to revolve around others’ needs rather than ask for my own to be met, a byproduct of cultural modeling. I did not have to accept this in my twenties in Singapore.
Yet, externalizing produced more bitterness, driving a deep wedge in our marriage which even I did not want.
My elder daughter is now seven, a beautiful lanky girl with thick black hair, a delightful conversationalist who shares my love for art, creativity and strategy games. As I simply enjoy time with her, I realize “how can I have it all?” was a distraction to the parallel question I asked when she was a newborn in Singapore: “Perhaps I could have it all; but do I want to have it all?”
What do I really want? This is a much higher-stakes, dangerous question.
It was clear that becoming a mother shifted my identity irrevocably. Where I would land on the other side could not be answered in principle, or in the intellect, or in generic advice from other women.
It had to be worked out through struggle, coming up against hard trade-offs, making choices, feeling the consequences, feeling the rage, adjusting the course, and (sometimes mistakenly) putting the responsibility of the consequences on somebody else.
It was only in coming up against trade-offs that I discovered how much I wanted to enjoy my children, not treat them as pieces of life to optimize.
From thirteen to sixteen, I attended an all-girls school in Singapore which famously teaches women that we can do everything men can (strangely, this included cheering in low voices so that we would not be ‘like the other girls’). I was angry on behalf of women of my mothers’ generation, who attained degrees but seemed hostage to the demands of their children and husbands. Surrounded by equally ambitious girls, I swore never to give up my career for a husband or children. My approach to children would be to optimize – doing the best I could in the least amount of time.
Where would I land after becoming a mother? This was only revealed when we moved to the Bay Area and lost all our support. Although it was my dream to grow a technology start-up, I repeatedly chose to stay in stable expatriate roles with the Singapore Government for five years.
While disliking the consequences, my choices showed me what I really valued: the flexibility to spend time with my young children, to hold their faces in my palms and giggle with them daily, and to be in the same physical space as much as possible (this was before remote work became mainstream during the pandemic).
The adventure, learning and a new culture of a technology start-up would have to wait until at least one constraint was lifted. When my husband finally completed his PhD in 2021, I took the leap.
The blessing in not having it all
While there are no Ah Qius, live-in domestic helpers and grandparents nearby, the blessing of parenting in the United States has been the continual clarity that trade-offs bring. Instead of relying on others to increase our capacity to have it all, my husband and I had to make choices and accept our consequences.
This increasing clarity has brought me freedom.
As my first baby turns seven this Sunday, I know I want to enjoy as many spring and fall breaks with her as possible, where we experiment with wildflower crafts in the backyard and go once-in-a-year dress shopping for her birthday party.
I know my purpose and calling outside the home and use every work hour towards that cause. At the same time, I have never been so confident about the limits that I will place on work so that I can enjoy the relationships right in front of me. I seek to work with people who respect and honor those limits, many of whom have been on similar journeys of coming up against hard trade-offs.
As for marriage, we finally stopped bargaining and learned how to talk about our needs. We reckoned with the ways we let each other down in the years of trying to adhere to society’s standards of having it all. In three years of honest conversations and digging up every hidden bitterness, we allowed ourselves to wonder why we married the other person. Our one promise was to not let go. We have learned a deeper unity, where the thriving of one truly means the thriving of the other. My husband has learned to champion my unstated needs as I have let go of the bitterness towards him in our earlier seasons.
Now and then, when I drop off a meal for sleep-deprived newborn parents in the Bay Area, I wish Ah Qiu could show up at their door instead. There is something profoundly beautiful about the Singaporean culture of parenting in community, amidst a web of relationships and expertise.
At the same time, there can be something stifling about having help so readily available. It inadvertently shields us from the questions that beg to be answered in a transition as big as becoming a mother.
There can be blessings in not being able to have it all.
This article was first published in Her World here.
Karen Tay has held senior leadership and advisory roles in the Singapore Government and start-ups in Singapore and Silicon Valley. She currently runs Threshold Allies and Her Life Ally, where she supports global leaders in navigating high stakes situations and transitions. You can follow her on LinkedIn or follow her mailing list for more content on leadership, modern parenthood, and navigating adversity.
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