This article was first published in The Sunday Times.
Eleven people - nine adults and two children - live in the four- room HDB flat of Madam Iris Koong's parents in Bedok.
She, her project supervisor husband and their four-year-old son sleep on mattresses on the floor in her parents' master bedroom and they do not mind it.
'My mum can look after my son while my husband and I are at work, and we can have healthy, home-cooked meals and Cantonese soups every day,' says the 34- year-old.
Meanwhile, the four-room HDB flat in Jurong that she and her husband own is unoccupied.
'We bought our flat in 2005 when we got married and it has always been like a holiday home for us. My mother-in-law and I take turns to clean it every week,' the self-employed Madam Koong says of the fully furnished flat, which has not been rented out.
'I stayed there with my husband and son only during my confinement period after giving birth.'
Besides her immediate family, the other eight people in the 112 sq m Bedok flat are her grandmother, father, mother, elder brother, sister-in-law, niece, younger brother and their Indonesian maid.
She is among the increasing number of Singaporeans aged 21 to 54 who are living with their parents in HDB flats after marriage. The figure has gone up from 10.7 per cent in 1998 to 14 per cent in 2008. This was revealed in the latest five-yearly Sample Household Survey of about 8,000 households conducted by the Housing Board.
The number of people in Madam Koong's household is probably above average, though.
Like her, her elder brother Rick and his family have their own five-room flat in Sengkang. According to her, they have also chosen not to live there because they 'prefer our current living arrangement and my niece, who is seven, is very attached to my parents'.
She insists that the situation in the flat is not as cramped as others might think.
'My father runs a wonton noodle stall in Geylang from night till morning, so he is usually not at home when we are home,' she says.
The second bedroom is occupied by her elder brother's family of three, and the third by her grandmother and their maid. Her younger brother Melcus, 31, sleeps in the living room.
With so many people under one roof, tension sometimes runs high, as is to be expected.
'In the morning, when we are all rushing to go to work, the two bathrooms are always occupied and when the taps are all turned on at the same time, the water supply becomes slow,' Madam Koong says.
But she is quick to add: 'We try to give and take, so some of us will wake up slightly earlier to use the bathroom because we know one another's schedules very well.'
The matter of who gets to watch his favourite programmes on the 46-inch TV that the family bought two months ago is no matter at all - the bedrooms have TVs, too.
'If someone is watching a TV programme in the living room, we'll just use the smaller TVs in the rooms,' Madam Koong says with a shrug.
Some married couples choose to live with their parents out of a sense of duty.
Personal assistant Anisah Samsiah has been living with her in-laws since marrying her gym manager husband Mohamad Fazli six years ago.
The family of six - including the couple's two children aged five and three - live in his parents' three-room Kembangan flat. His two elder sisters moved out after marriage.
'My husband is very filial and wants to take care of his parents who are both 70 years old,' says Madam Anisah, 33.
They have no plans at the moment to buy a larger place of their own.
Assistant manager Joyce Yong's mother- in-law, Madam Ong Siew Khim, moved in with her family to their five-room flat in Yishun in 1999 after the elderly woman suffered a stroke.
'She has since recovered and now looks after my kids and helps out with some household chores,' says Madam Yong, whose two daughters and a son are aged between 10� months and eight years.
Madam Ong has since rented out her three-room flat in Ang Mo Kio. Her husband died more than 20 years ago.
When Madam Yong has disagreements with her mother-in-law, her analyst husband, Mr Alex Tan, 39, steps in to play mediator.
She says: 'Recently, my mother-in-law cooked porridge, put it in the fridge and reheated it in the evening. It is not good for the children, so my husband and I talked to her nicely and told her not to do that again and she agreed.'
When her children are older, her two daughters will share a room with her mother-in-law and their maid, while her son will occupy the third room, she says.
Engineer Jayven Koh, 29, is waiting for his Punggol flat to be ready in 2012. Meanwhile, he and his wife have been living in his parents' four-room HDB flat in Bedok since getting married in 2008.
The household has been largely blissful, save for one occasion.
He says: 'Once, my mum told me that my wife did not attend to some of our relatives who came to visit. So I talked to my wife about it.'
He has an elder sister who works in China and returns to Singapore twice a year.
Security manager Cliff Yap, 35, is living with his in-laws because 'my wife is officially one of the owners of the flat along with her parents, so we can't apply for our own place'.
He says: 'Although my wife can get her name taken out of the housing deed, we have no plans to do that now as she is very close to her parents.'
Marriage and family counsellor Ang Thiam Hong, 57, notes that 'husbands who live with their wives' parents often feel like they have 'married out' and as a result may be overly sensitive to the remarks and behaviour of their in-laws, which could lead to conflicts'.
In Mr Yap's case, he admits to enjoying some perks of his present living arrangements - meals and household chores are taken care of by his in-laws - and says there is only one problem: 'My in-laws like to feed my silky terrier with whatever they are eating even though I've explained to them that this is not good for the dog.
'But there's nothing I can do except to bear with it because the house belongs to them after all.'
Reminds me of old days when the big family live as one. Tensions and fun were always on a daily basis.
The feeling that one no longer can get on the basis of privacy.