(Letter published in Ethos Books’ Attunement newsletter)

Dear Reader,

The other day my daughter, an only child, referred to Unease, my third book, as my fourth kid. She likes to tease me, my human child. She enjoys watching me squirm with guilt as she brings up the family lore—of her creation—that 2017, the year I was most intensively writing my second book, This Is What Inequality Looks Like, was a year I neglected her. In 2025, an older kid than she was in 2017, her eyes lit up with mischief every time she claimed that my immersion-obsession with Unease was bringing back ‘traumatic’ memories of being forgotten. Last week a friend texted me congratulations on my “new book baby”, making me wonder if indeed I had made my only child feel like she had to compete with her book-siblings for attention.

I don’t think I’ve referred to my books as my children in public, and apart from this letter, I’m not intending to start. But I suppose this reference to books as writers’ children must be pretty common. Writing a book is a deeply immersive and highly personal process. The work is consuming and the labour feels like care, nurturance, a complicated love. For better and for worse, there is a great deal of one’s self that finds its way into a book, and that too finds its mirror in parenting. And of course, in the best-case scenario, it takes a village to raise a book-baby.

I have been tremendously lucky in this last regard. In the writing of this book, I have had many villagers to rely on. There are people offering direct help—colleagues and editors who bring ideas for the text. Friends and family support the process by inserting light and joy in everyday life, so that it is possible to go to my desk day after day, year after year. And then there is a whole backdrop that is the accumulation of knowledge, all those shoulders of giants—teachers and mentors and peers who’ve taught me how to read and think and write; scholars and writers who have no way of knowing that their consciousness would find a way to meld with mine, other people’s writings sparking a million unpredictable connections that turn into new words, sentences, paragraphs, eventually a book. What a miracle.

The other day, a journalist came to talk to me about Unease. I cannot now recall what he asked me, but I know I launched into an answer about how this book demands more from readers than TIWILL did. It is a book made up of chapters, not essays. There is a beginning, a middle and an end. The book makes sense, I think, if it is read that way—in sequence, from start to finish. TIWILL is a dip-in, dip-out book; Unease, not so much. I cannot claim there is no TL;DR version—people who come up with these will no doubt outwit me—but because I put so much effort into detailing the nitty-gritty, I don’t see its key arguments, which can be summarised, as the main attractions. To get the most out of it, the book demands sustained attention. In various places, it asks the reader to stretch, reach—beyond what’s already in their knowledge banks and imaginations—in order to get to a different place, better prepared to enter the following chapter.

Reader, I cannot predict what you will find when you do all this labour, but I think that is a miracle too—my complicated human consciousness meeting your complicated human consciousness. The journalist smiled when I said all this, pointed out that I am going against the grain in every trend around reading and attention in the contemporary world. But I don’t know, I guess since I’ve had the audacity to write a book, I should have the audacity to believe people will read it with some of the same care with which I wrote it.

I am about to hand over my book-baby to you. Unlike my human child, who will belong to me even when she is an adult and out in the world, I do not intend to continue thinking of Unease as mine once it is published. It was a special, beautiful experience to have written it. I am satisfied with how it has turned out. But I read much more than I write so I know how it goes: once a book is in someone else’s hands, it is their prerogative what value they make of it. Thank you, in advance, for taking it the rest of the way.

— Teo You Yenn, March 28, 2026

Unease: Life in Singapore Families (Ethos Books, 2026) will be in bookstores on April 4, 2026

For news and updates on events, follow Ethos Books

My colleague, Shannon Ang, and I have set up a research centre at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). The Centre for the Study of Social Inequality (CSSI) aims to:

(1) promote and enhance multi-disciplinary understandings of inequality’s various forms and dynamics;

(2) nurture public social science–attentive to the concerns of ordinary members of society, deliberate in making links between theoretical knowledge and practical solutions, and committed to making academic knowledge accessible to a broad public.

More about our mission here, and how the Centre came about here. Follow us here.

It is early days and we have much to do. We’ve begun the work of building up networks amongst scholars, across various universities in Singapore and from multiple disciplines; we’re pleased that many colleagues have agreed to be centre Associates. We aim to support younger scholars interested in pursuing the study of inequality in Singapore and are also happy to have granted our first Junior Visiting Fellowship. In May 2025, we will co-host the Population Association of Singapore’s (PAS) Annual Meeting, with the theme of “Demography and Inequality: Intersecting Paths.”

Networking lunch with some Advisory Board members and Associates, February 2025

The founding of a centre for the study of social inequality, unimaginable just a few years ago, speaks to changes that have already occurred in our society’s collective commitment to inequality as a problem. We believe research and knowledge are crucial for further generating ideas for solutions and for continuing to energise society’s collective response to an urgent social problem. We hope colleagues, collaborators, allies, and fellow members of Singapore society will agree.

I was invited to speak on a panel on ‘Community and the Market’ at the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) Singapore Perspectives 2025 conference on the theme of ‘Community.’

We use ‘community’ a lot, positively, but often as mere rhetorical flourish. In my remarks, I explored why we value community and what virtues it embodies. I argued that if corporations are serious about caring about community, then abiding by its virtues–interdependence, mutuality, solidarity, collective wellbeing, and egalitarianism–must be part of everyday practices and not just peripheral and relegated to occasional volunteer or charitable activities.

More generally, all of us as members of society have the right to ask of business: how do workplace rules and regulations contribute to or harm the pursuit of the virtue of egalitarianism, in which people are recognized as human equals? To what extent do the wages workers are paid recognize their contributions to creating the results which can only be created by their collective labor? Does a corporation have space for workers to have voice in decisions that shape their collective wellbeing? Do what corporations produce by way of goods, services, technologies, ideas, information contribute to or harm the possibilities of cultivating solidarity and egalitarianism among people? Do firms relate to society in ways that recognize the importance of mutual obligations among social actors, including those of contributing to the commons through paying taxes?

Full text of speech here

Ng Kok Hoe and I have been discussing our Minimum Income Standard (MIS) research on various platforms. Earlier this year, The Karyawan, a publication of the Association of Muslim Professionals, published our piece on “How people think about basic needs.” The Singapore Institute of Directors also invited us to share our research and we wrote a piece, “A living wage for Singapore” for their SID Directors Bulletin. We also had a conversation with Kwan Jin Yao, including detailed exchanges about methodology, on his SocialService.sg podcast. In May, Grace Ho, host of The Straits Times‘ newish podcast “In Your Opinion,” invited us to talk about our main findings, our responses to critiques, and reflections on current policy. The interview was aired in two parts, Part 1 on May 13 and Part 2 on May 27.

Teo, Youyenn. 2022. “Education as care labor: Expanding our lens on the work-life balance problem.” Current Sociology 0(0):00113921211072577.

(Update: published in 2023 in Vol. 71 Issue 7 Pages 1181-1382)

Abstract

Scholars have documented the challenges of combining wage work and care responsibilities in various societal contexts. National variations reveal that public policy and care infrastructure have major effects in shaping gendered patterns, class inequalities, as well as overall wellbeing of parents. Childcare centers and schools can enable people with children to pursue jobs and careers. Yet, as I show in this article, education systems’ demands can become a major component of parental care labor. Drawing on interviews with 92 parents in Singapore, I illustrate the ways in which education care labor impedes work-life reconciliation as well as deepens the significance of gender and class.

After several years of work, the 2021 Singapore Minimum Income Standard (MIS) report has now been released. The team—consisting of Ng Kok Hoe, Neo Yu Wei, Ad Maulod, Stephanie Chok, Wong Yee Lok and me—ascertained how ordinary Singaporeans think about what constitutes basic needs in Singapore today and determined the household budgets necessary to meet these needs. Our first report, published in 2019, focused on households of elderly people (living alone or as couples). This new report looks at households of parents (single or partnered) living with children aged 25 or below, as well as updating the figures for elderly households.

Following the launch of the report last week, The Straits Times also carried an op-ed (paywall) which I co-wrote with Ng Kok Hoe. In it we explore the nature of the focus group discussions in more detail, highlighting the dynamics of the deliberations and how we observed groups come to consensus despite variations in their own experiences:

Over these four years, we have learnt from our participants that everyone living in Singapore today has needs for housing, food and clothing, opportunities for education, employment and work-life balance, as well as access to healthcare. Everyone needs a sense of belonging, respect, security and independence. Every person needs choices to participate in social activities, and the freedom to engage in one’s cultural and religious practices.

We have learnt from them too that they know not everyone in Singapore today is meeting these needs to the same degree. This does not lead anyone to say that any of these are therefore not needs; that only those who can afford it deserve belonging, respect, security and independence; that some children should have paid tuition suited to their needs and other children will just have to accept whatever they can get from charity.

In spending time and energy to share their experiences and insights with us, our participants have put in our hands the responsibility of putting this question on the table: If ordinary people can see and express that there are universal needs, that there is a baseline below which no one should fall, what will we do collectively to make sure all members of our society meet these basic needs?

Now that we know what a basic standard of living in Singapore should entail, the work ahead must be to ensure that everyone can achieve it.

Find out more about MIS research and the report by visiting the MIS website.