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Aw Mun Khay (32/07) http://theultimatefallacy.blogspot.com/

Are career demands killing marriages in Singapore? 4.8.07

It is undeniable that the high career demand does affect the amount of time one spends with his family. High career demand could be one of the factors that result in the high divorce rates in Singapore, thus bring along dire consequences. Hence, various measures should be taken to solve such a problem.

It was mentioned that government should ban employees from making their employees to work unreasonably long hours. However, I do not believe that such a law is possible to implement as different jobs have different demands. For example, a doctor cannot refuse to offer their professional help in a case of emergency even if they had worked for long hours. In such a case, it is difficult to determine the amount of working hours seen as unreasonably. Instead, having a more flexible working schedule can allow the employees to have a better allocation of their time between work and family. If such a freedom is allowed, employees can attend family gathering before returning to work. For example, parents are able to support their children participating in any major competition, and then returning to finish off matters at work after the competition. In this way, both the family and work are not neglected.
Besides the government and companies coming up with measure like family day to allow the employees to form stronger family bonds, individuals should also play a part in ensuring sufficient time is allocated to their family. It is often a practice to bring unfinished work home. Although this is unavoidable, one should not be concern only on finishing their work and sacrifice the time to catch up with their family members. Hence, individuals should also learn to allocate their time between work and family so as to strike a balance between the two. One can have a light chat with his family members before heading off to finish his work or while taking a break in between. These time spent may seem insignificant but it ensures that individuals always put in their effort to show their care to their family members, thus building strong family ties at the same time.