IF MRS Joni Ong had her way, she would shut down all offices at '6.30pm sharp', so people can go home to their families before dark.

The human resource consultant blames Singapore's flagging fertility rate on its frenetic office culture, where men and women get sucked into the vortex of work.

'We need more working parents in the parks with their children before sundown. It happens in countries like Australia and the United States, so why not here?'

Children who grow up in the company of domestic help and spend all their time at tuition or enrichment classes 'may not want children of their own', she warns.

As a mother of five and a consummate career woman, she embodies the archetype that the Government hopes more Singapore women will aspire towards.

The 48-year-old is one of Singapore's foremost fertility advocates. She is president of a pro-baby charity and deputy chair of the National Family Council, set up to promote family-friendly measures.

She also chairs the management committee of the Fairfield Methodist Schools and heads the Methodist Schools Foundation.

For much of her life, the wife of Member of Parliament Ong Kian Min has clung to unfashionable convictions, which often jarred with the times.

Despite 'Stop at Two' government policies, she grew up in a boisterous extended family of 21 and dreamt of having her own brood of six some day.

Most of her female peers chose to study the Humanities but not her. She waitressed and sold fish to put herself through the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where she 'cut up cadavers' and read neuro anatomy. 'I wanted to see what we look like from the inside,' she says.

She graduated top of her class, but as jobs in the field were limited, she rejected a doctoral scholarship from the university and returned home to Singapore.

At 24, she married Mr Ong, her Anglo-Chinese Junior College schoolmate, now 48. After trying but failing to get pregnant for three years, she braved jibes in 1990 by opting for in-vitro fertilisation, a relatively uncommon procedure at the time, when eggs and sperm are fertilised on a laboratory petri dish rather than in the womb.

They have five children today - the $20,000 'IVF babies', Kristi-Ann and Kathi-Lyn, both 18, Elisabeth, 17, Emmeliene, 15 and Jonathan, 12. The latter three were conceived naturally.

Mrs Ong says the raft of pro-natal goodies the Prime Minister unveiled on Sunday is 'gratifying'. But she is not sure if the answer lies in more money and more maternity leave. 'The more you give, the more people will demand,' says the president of I Love Children, a charity set up in 2005 to encourage procreation. It does this through seminars and community events to remind people of the simple pleasures of childrearing.

Women will have more babies if they are convinced - like she was - that being a mother is good not just for the country but for themselves. 'What is more important is a major shift in mindsets,' she says.

Years of state policies and parents alike pushing for 'excellence and self-reliance' have made young men and women value a good education and job security over marriage and children.

In her household, family time is prioritised above all else. 'My husband and I have dinner with the children at 7.30pm nearly every day,' she says. In 2000, Mr Ong, now a legal consultant, relinquished his position as partner of Drew and Napier to spend more time with the children.

Every Saturday is Grandparent's Day, with the family taking Mr Ong's parents out for lunch. The older couple - who helps the Ongs mind the children while their parents are at work, along with two maids - lives with them in their sprawling Chatsworth Road bungalow.

Licking the late culture need not harm productivity. 'Work has a way of expanding to fill up empty hours,' she says, adding that many office workers fritter away precious time gossiping because they know they can work late. Others spend too much time at work, 'often in the false belief that that is what is required'.

She once asked a former colleague at a bank why she was 'hanging around'. 'She pointed at the boss and said: 'He's still around, so how can I leave?' Such dutiful drudgery persists today and could be keeping singles from meeting potential life partners, she laments.

'Work should never be the only thing in your life,' she says. 'Education, employment and babies need not be mutually exclusive.'

She acknowledges that ordinary Singaporeans - without the benefit of her privileged background and who grapple with the soaring costs of living - may beg to differ.

After all, her first marital home was the bungalow where her family still lives. However, she says: 'Raising children is as expensive as you want it to be. Some can raise two kids comfortably on an income of $3,000. For others, even $10,000 is not enough for one child.'

A great believer in economies of scale, she says: 'Hand-me-downs are a big money saver. All my four daughters wore the same clothes. You have but one body. So how many T-shirts do you need?'

More important than money to women today, she says, are 'positive role models' who effectively juggle career and children.

She found inspiration in her paternal grandmother, Tan Poh Neo, who took over her husband's stevedoring business after being widowed at 40 with five children. The late matriarch insisted that all three of her sons and their families live with her at the family home, a sprawling old bungalow on Somerville Road.

It was there, after school, that Mrs Ong spent many indolent afternoons playing badminton and rounders with her four siblings and 11 cousins.

Her late mother Nancy Tan also worked as a stenographer because she did not want to spend her life 'playing mahjong and cooking' like many of her peers. 'Work not only gave her a sense of self-worth, it also helped her save more so that each of us siblings could have a better life,' she says.

She remembers how her mother - who often emphasised the importance of a good education - used to hover around with warm glasses of milk while her five children huddled around a table studying at night. Today, three of them including Mrs Ong, have Master's degrees.

She learnt early on that life can be unfair. At 19, a school hero she admired for his brilliance and athletic prowess died during a physical training exercise in NS.

'I realised then that we just don't know how much time we have. So we must live every day as if it's our last...To whom much is given, much is expected,' she declares. By her own admission, she packs into one life, what most would 'pack in three'.

The Straits Times spent a couple of days trailing her last week during which the indefatigable woman trained students, hosted a poolside pizza party for her daughter's friends, took her in-laws out to lunch and ferried her children to tuition and music classes.

She is multi-faceted, but being a mother, she says, is what she is proudest of. 'It's what has given the most meaning to my life. It's what I want to be most remembered for.'

On allegations that she took up the procreation gauntlet only because she is the wife of a People's Action Party MP, her eyes lock yours in a steely gaze as she says: 'I wear my heart on my sleeve. I would never champion something I don't believe in.'

Her friends and co-workers agree. 'She has an unceasing passion for life - especially for her children and her work - that's quite rare,' says Ms Helen Lim-Yang, 43, who is also her boss at HR firm OTi Consulting.

Her passion for her profession is evident at the leadership courses she conducts for company head honchos, executives and students.

At a session for Singapore Management University student leaders last Friday, she expounds on the values she cherishes: 'Never allow people to pigeonhole you...Every child is destined for greatness - you must find your own strengths, harness your gifts.'

Frequently, her tips come not in words but action. She gets the students to balance colourful balloon sticks on their extended forefingers - to show that those who kept their sight on the top of the stick were able to keep it standing the longest.

'Always focus on your highest goal. If you focus on the base, you will keep dropping the stick,' she exhorts.

In an instant, she morphs from mentor to mother, demonstrating how to look beyond words to visual and vocal cues to decide whether to trust someone. 'Words don't always amount to much.'

Her wisdom is honed by experience. Her family has paid dearly for being too trusting. In the early 1970s, her father and his brothers had to shut down their family-owned business when a trusted employee embezzled their money.

Her brother paid an even higher price in 2006. He was murdered in Bangkok by a disgruntled worker he had sacked hours before for misappropriating funds.

'It was devastating, but such things happen. But I know that some day we'll meet again,' she says, drawing strength from her Christian faith.

As principal consultant, she is not yet on the highest rung of the corporate ladder. Her reply is quick and self-assured when asked if she might have been more successful professionally if she had fewer children or none at all.

'I might be but I don't think I would be the happy person I am today.'

Indeed, she repeats often that it will be the lives she's touched rather than the deals she's made that will be her biggest legacy. 'I think as mothers, we often redefine what success means to us.'

In 2004, she took two years of unpaid leave to help Jonathan cope with dyslexia, a learning disability where children have difficulty reading and spelling.

He had failed his Primary One English and was put in a 'learning support programme' (LSP) which is meant to give special-needs children a leg up in life.

One day, the boy told his mother that a classmate had taunted him, saying the LSP was a programme for 'lousy stupid people'.

'I told him don't you ever believe that. Don't you ever let your dyslexia be an excuse for anything'.

Well-mannered and friendly, Jonathan, who has since switched to the Singapore American School, is coping marvellously.

At the poolside of the family's 'second home', a condominium in Novena, he sits next to Mrs Ong, hanging onto her every word.

When asked about his mother, he lowers his head and thinks for a while, then expels: 'She gives us our freedom. So that we can learn from our mistakes.'

In the half light of the pool, his effusive mother seems, for once, at a loss for words. But her smile says it all.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Aug 20, 2008.