Not just ‘kiasu ’ : Teo You Yenn unpacks the Unease of parenting in Singapore

Across three years of interviewing 92 Singaporean parents for her new book, best-selling author Teo You Yenn listened to their aspirations and exasperations, their stories of survival and falling behind. In the end, it was what they did not say that pained the sociologist. Rarely did parents speak spontaneously about what they enjoyed or admired in their kids. In fact, most of them framed their children as a narrow set of educational problems in need of a solution. Teo, an associate professor and provost’s chair in sociology at NTU, tells The Sunday Times in an exclusive interview ahead of the release of Unease: Life In Singapore Families (2026): “I hope, when people read it, they feel an ache. Parenting shouldn’t feel that way and childhood shouldn’t feel that way. That is one of the big costs of having society be structured the way it is.”

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