> Other than the omnipresent paranoia, the thing that struck me as the most bizarre is that almost nothing in the country is oriented around children.

I’ve been living in Singapore for a year and don’t really understand what you are talking about with either of these things.

Singapore is one of the safest places in the world – people go running alone at night without a second thought, you see young kids wandering around unaccompanied, violent crime is low, etc. Just last night I saw three kids who weren’t even teenagers cycling past me from the beach with fishing gear after dark. I don’t see any "omnipresent paranoia", if anything it’s the complete opposite. What paranoia did you see?

As far as being oriented around children, there’s playground equipment in all the parks and condos, kids pools in the condos, there’s a bunch of family-friendly things all over the country to see and do, the government has all kinds of incentives for people to start families, etc. What do you think is missing?