Why is it the norm for Singaporean parents to treat their kids as retirement plans?

That's actually the traditional mindset. I guess many of us are in this forum because we are trying to put a stop to the sandwich generation to our kids thus trying our best to achieve financial freedom.

I believe my parent in laws and parents have the same mentality. We were treated like an retirement plan, and it is also mandatory for us to give back monetarily. I heard too from my husband that her mom has always taught him since young that he has to repay her every single cent that she spent on him.

I find this mentality puzzling, while I do believe in fillial piety, I do too believe that we did not asked to be brought to this world, that the parents should take full responsibility for their actions and that filial piety can be shown in many ways.

I was also in fact just discussing about this topic to a Malaysian colleague of mine and she shared with me that she has been asking around different people around the world (Chinese from China and Taiwan, Korean, Japanese, Indian, American, Europeans etc) and she found out that only Singaporeans and Malaysian chinese have this mentality.

Initially, I thought that this culture came directly from our Chinese ancestors from China somewhere back in the past, but apparently she found out otherwise and that our Chinese counterpart in China in fact do not expect allowance from their children.

Am very puzzled how Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese eventually came up with this tradition/culture..