Singapore: Dr Love to the rescue

SINGAPORE — With his trendy clothes and wacky glasses, Wei Siang Yu looks more like an artist than a medical miracle-worker. But the man Singaporeans call "Dr. Love," is trying to cure this Asian nation of what ails it most: an excessively low birth-rate.

The cure? Let's just say it's behind closed doors.

Forty-one year-old Dr. Wei mixes traditional medicine with multimedia to help his workaholic countrymen fan the flames of passion and, hopefully, make more babies. From love cruises and telephone hotlines to sex education courses and a reality television show in which couples battle it out to see who can conceive first, Dr. Love is doing his bit to pull Singaporeans out of the office and into the bedroom.

"Singaporeans are very money-oriented. If you meet a girl it's most likely she will judge you in minutes, asking how much you earn, do you have a car, where do you live? You have to pass all these criteria, if you don't, forget it. She'll move on," said Dr. Love.

And things move fast in Singapore. The nation, which marks 45 years of independence from Malaysia today, has gone from a poor tropical outpost to one of the world's richest places. Everywhere you look it seems there is a new luxury mall or swanky restaurant opening up, with Mercedes and BMWs nudging out Hondas and Toyotas in the parking lot. 

Thanks to a boost in exports and tourism the economy swelled nearly 18 percent in the first half of 2010, prompting predictions that the GDP will grow between 13 and 15 percent for the year — which could make it the world's fastest expanding economy. One in 10 homes is a millionaire household, according to a recent report by U.S. consulting firm Boston Consulting Group.

But while Singaporeans have been busy breeding prosperity they have failed to breed a future generation. The fertility rate, one of the lowest on the planet, has been steadily falling over the past 20 years. Today, it is at an all-time low.

The fertility rate of 1.28 children per woman is far below the 2.1 needed for the population to replace itself. The social and economic implications of a dwindling workforce are what Singapore's prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, called "grave."

Earlier this year Lee warned that even "the best economic policy will not bring us growth if our population starts to decline."

Sociology professor Tan Ern Ser shares the prime minister's view. "A major impact will be the aging population," he said, "because there are already less babies to replenish the stock even though life expectancy is getting longer."

Tan says that although Singaporeans are pro-family, many find the cost of having children outweighs the benefits. "Middle-class people see children as high maintenance with minimal returns," he said.

Singapore can be seen as a victim of its own success. For decades the government placed the emphasis on hard work and education rather than family.

Wei Siang Yu, aka "Dr. Love." (Natacha Butler/GlobalPost)

"It's a status thing," said 39-year-old accountant David Tan, who recently became a father but says many of his peers are opting out of parenthood. "To be successful you have to have a nice condo, big car and money. Basically your success is measured on what you own, not how many kids you have."

Advertising executive Gino Borromeo, 32, decided along with his wife not to have kids. "You get great job opportunities both here and to go abroad and it's much easier to take advantage of that if you don't have kids."

It's a pattern the government is now aggressively trying to reverse, offering cash incentives for child-rearing, more time for maternity leave and more child-friendly public spaces.

But it's not just money that is preventing Singaporeans from procreating. There are also emotional and sexual reasons, which is why the government, despite being conservative, has called in the flamboyant Dr. Love.

"Up to now it hasn't been about feelings, it's been all about rules, regulations, policies. What are we going to achieve five years down the road? How are we going to increase our GDP?" said Wei. "People have forgotten their feelings and fantasies, there's no sensuality. It's just all work and stress."

"Most marriages I see are sexless within three years and break down within five. We're looking at a 35-percent divorce rate, so how can you expect people to be thinking about kids?" said Wei. "We need to look at that environment and get people communicating again."

And if anyone knows how to get people communicating it's Dr. Love. His straightforward, eccentric style has made him popular and his use of technology has ingratiated him with a younger, tech-savvy generation.

His television show, "Love Airways," which combines sex education with entertainment — or "sex edutainment" — topped late-night ratings, and his sexxie.tv website gives young people the chance to ask online doctors the sort of blush-inducing questions they would never ask their parents.

Wei graduated top of his class from the prestigious Monash Medical School in Australia, though his fascination with science began 10 years ago when he launched a service that monitors female hormones and lets women know when they are ovulating via text message or email.

Subsequently, he moved to the Netherlands, where he set up a much-heralded wireless sex education service in conjunction with Microsoft that provided online doctors to answer teenagers' sex questions within 48 hours.

When Wei returned home to Singapore in 2002 he found the economy booming but he also saw a gap in people's knowledge about sex and fertility. "At that time people were still debating whether or not to have sex education in school. It was still quite a conservative culture," he said.

Fast-forward nearly a decade and Singaporeans are certainly better informed about sexual, emotional and fertility issues. They're also a little less conservative thanks to Dr. Love, who says people stop him on the street all the time to discuss their most eye-wateringly intimate issues. "I have wives who tell me they like being tied up but they would not dare talk about it to their husband," he said.

Despite juggling countless projects he still works at a grassroots level, spending one-on-one time with people and giving couples fertility advice about lifestyle and diet changes. He helps mend broken hearts, sometimes recommending people get away from Singapore for some "getting to know you again" mini-breaks.

But while he may be playing Cupid in others' lives, Wei says there are disadvantages to his line of work.

"Sadly, I am exposed to all the things that don't work in a relationship: affairs, divorce, stress, lack of desire. It's hard dealing with people's break-ups all the time. So I guess I am much more realistic about relationships now than before."

For the record, Dr. Love is single.