YOU might have wondered, like me, about Mrs S Murali's response to her husband's column in this newspaper last Sunday.

He was angling for her agreement to raising their family size to five or six from the current four. That is, from having just two children to three or four.

Now take another look at the big picture above, taken inside a Singapore Management University function room last Sunday night.

In the ragged rows on the right are happy children who have won prizes in a creative writing contest.

On the left, some standing or elevated on chairs, some squatting on the floor, are even happier parents.

Not too many years from now, we should be able to pick up a flexible electronic copy of The New Paper On Sunday, tap on the picture with a finger, stroke towards the left and view a newsreel of the noisy, chaotic rush minutes before this face-to-face scene was freeze-framed.

Last Sunday, after the 26 winners and the 32 shortlisted writers had received their prizes from the organisers, Creative Horizons Language Centre, it was group photo time.

The children walked to the front singly, in pairs or threes.

As they were being lined up for the official photographer, a mini-stampede started in front of them.

Fast-on-the-draw parents with cameras and a few similarly armed siblings rushed to the front, pushing away chairs, putting back chairs, trying out squats and standing positions, some jostling for better angles, a few getting up on chairs, changing chairs, alighting from chairs and moving to the side in search of a better view.

All this while, they were clicking away or attempting to, or keeping the video-recorders running.

The head of Ngee Ann Primary School's English department, in pink and white, bravely stayed in her seat, camera at the ready. Madam Rafeah Yahya was seated in the second row during the prize-giving. But by photo-op time, the front row of seats had magically vanished.

A roving photographer with video-enabled camera would have captured more magic when relative calm had returned to the fifth-level function room.

IMPRESSED

The parents' fleet-footed and robust rush for photo positions had both surprised and impressed me.

When I chatted with some of them after the group photo, I was impressed again. This time by the irrepressible joy and abundant pride of parents, including those with two or three children all of whom had won prizes in the contest.

I was reminded of Mr Murali's references that morning to the old movie Cheaper By The Dozen, as well as the chaos and hilarity in big families. He called for more time for working parents to spend with their children.

Like many in Singapore, he is concerned about Singapore's very low birth rate and the efforts to raise it.

Much hard sell has gone into this, particularly by Government, over long years. The national effort is being reviewed and will be upgraded.

But we all know that new software comes with bugs.

Will new campaigns and new incentives - and totally new approaches - end up like we are banging our collective head against a brick wall?

COMPLEX SITUATION

It is a really complex situation. There is an urgent need for babies. There is the joy of parenthood. There are the problems of parenthood.

My pro-family thought last Sunday night, inspired by close proximity to the utter happiness of proud parents, was this: Newsreels of such close-up scenes, offered as news and not advocacy, might well make many think of parenthood or repeating it.

Like the smell of great cooking or the sight of a well-laden table would trigger thoughts of eating again even when we thought we were not hungry.

In the so-called Paper Planes 2008 story-writing contest, the overall winner was eight-year-old Justin Tham Jia Yi with his little story entitled Beware. It was about an inattentive boy who accidentally banged his head against a wall despite warning shouts.

There were 400-plus contestants, including 40 from Malaysia. They ranged in age from lower primary to upper secondary. Justin, a Primary 2 student from Ngee Ann, beat them all.

His dad, aircraft ground engineer Roger Tham, 55, said he was 'very shocked' when the win was announced. He and his homemaker wife Karen noticed an almost immediate lift in their elder child's confidence level.

The Thams have a daughter, three-year-old Jermaine. Do they plan to have more children?

'Oh, no, two are enough,' was Mr Tham's fast and emphatic answer.

But he agreed that the surprise and the joy at Justin's accomplishment were worth all the hard work and time put into his upbringing. Yes, he and his wife would look forward to similar high points of parenthood from Jermaine's achievements.

More than two? No! The Thams want the best for their children. Stopping at two, to them, assures that.

So I am left wondering whether Mrs Murali still wants to stop at two.

And I also wonder whether Mrs Tham will have a change of mind and, like Mr Murali, will then do a bit of fishing with her spouse.