At 21, with school, work, friendships, late night hangouts, and the freedom to explore, life is often just beginning. For Reiko, everything shifted when she found out she was pregnant. "I was still in school... less than a year into university," she shared. "I didn't know how to tell my parents." In a moment that felt overwhelming and uncertain, she asked her boyfriend, now her husband, to break the news to her parents while she was at work. At that time, studying in universi

When I was an adolescent, I never imagined what it was like to be pregnant, go into labor and give birth. I was already 17 when my mother had her last child, and I vividly recall visiting my mom in hospital after she’d endured a difficult breech labor. My baby sister was adorable and pink, my mother looked exhausted and spent, while my father danced around, snapping away with his Polaroid as we welcomed the final edition into our family of 8. I never expected that in a flash

Nita used to think that having a big brood of lively and healthy kids, with a doting husband to boot, was the definition of marital bliss and domestic fulfillment. As a young girl back in her hometown of Pekanbaru in the Riau Province of Indonesia, she had always dreamt of this whilst helping her father in their vegetable allotment. When she met her husband Ram and eventually moved to Singapore more than twenty years ago, it seemed as though she was on the cusp of realizing t