Do you think professional parenting is the way to go for S'pore?

Professional Parents are foster parents who have been carefully selected, licensed, and specially trained to raise other people’s children. Over the last few decades, our culture has become less and less clear about its messages to parents and other guardians and educators of its children. Parents often experience doubts or guilt regarding the decisions they make for their children’s sake because they receive so much conflicting advice from various “experts” in the field of child rearing. Much of this confusion is a result of the rapid changes our society as a whole has been going through. Thus, I feel that parents should do without role models and scripts, let alone pushing their parental responsibilities to strangers, and let their hearts be their guide.
The life of the family is a learning experience for both the parents and children. The idea of family is to go through trial and tribulation together. I believe that parenting is about the process and not the end result. Natural parenting allows the parents to rein in their own expectations. This is because professional parenting is based on certain fixed philosophy. For an example, it could be based on the western idea of nursing and nurturing babies which may not be suitable for the Asian ways.
It is not an uncommon sight in Singapore to see both parents out working, leaving their children in the hands of the maids. While I agree that professional parenting makes parenting more efficient, family life is not about efficiency. There is a saying that “a home should be clean enough to be healthy but dirty enough to be happy.” Moreover, there has also been much focus on work-life balance. The five-day work-week and flexible work arrangements such as telecommuting and part-timing have made it much easier for officers to fulfil their responsibilities outside work, as well as to engage in other pursuits. Thus having insufficient time to take care of their children is not an excuse for parents to turn to professional parenting.
Journeys into unknown territory often involve taking two steps forward and one step back. Parents swell with pride in seeing their young ones make their first baby steps. Why not, then, take a little pride in their own? At the end of the day, would they want their babies to call them mummy or nanny?