SINGAPORE: Does earning a high salary come at the expense of family time?
A woman recently sparked discussion on social media after claiming that fathers in high-paying, demanding professions—such as doctors, lawyers, management consultants, and IT specialists—earning more than S$20,000 a month often struggle to maintain a normal family life. According to her, these men rarely have time for a proper dinner or meaningful interactions with their loved ones.
She then shared her friend’s husband as an example. She claimed that he would “come home, do more work, briefly kiss his wife and baby, and then go straight to bed.”
Even on weekends, she said, he would only spend “a few pockets of time” with them.
The woman added that her friend, who gave birth three months ago, has been mainly caring for the baby on her own, while their helper handles the household chores. “Her husband claims this is normal, but I feel like it’s just poor time management and a lack of willingness on his part,” she wrote.
She then posed a question to the Reddit community: “Do you guys spend time with your babies or wives? Specifically, high earners making S$20,000 and above per month in demanding jobs.”
“It’s all about whether he wants to or not.”
In the comments, many users told the woman that her friend’s husband was simply making excuses. “Lol. He doesn’t want to spend time with the baby, so he’s got excuses,” one wrote.
Another shared, “It’s all about whether he wants to or not. Both my hubs and I used to work easily 12-15h days as the norm when we were DINKs for many years. Miraculously, this changed once I got pregnant. After the kids came, the hubs manages to reach home before sunset on most days lol.”
A third commented, “Pathetic. I’m a high-earning (HE) working mom who makes more than S$20k a month. I know so many friends and colleagues who are also HE working moms who make more than S$20k a month, and on top of excelling in our careers, we are all fully involved mothers, the default parent, and also manager of the household, and all of us have husbands in equally demanding careers.”
Others, however, disagreed with this view, stating that some fathers do find it difficult to juggle professional and family responsibilities, but that this isn’t inherently a “negative thing.”
One user wrote, “My husband is exactly like what you described. He married his work, but to be fair, we have a comfortable lifestyle cause of him. We no longer include him in any plannings except the yearly family holidays, but he will bring his laptop to work at night in the hotel and here and there some work disruption during our holidays.”
In other news, a tech professional who spent the past 10 years climbing the corporate ladder recently shared on a local forum that he’s considering enrolling in the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) to acquire practical skills in a new field.
“I have always been hands-on and have loved fixing and tinkering with things all my life, but I never had any proper form of training—just YouTube and some hope,” he said.
