I know that we’ve already traversed this in a diary, but as DailyKos’s self-appointed Kiwi correspondent, I couldn’t resist sharing some thoughts from an NZ perspective about this particular moment….
Sometimes the big, political, zeitgeisty moments – when something important shifts in the way our society sees itself or some important symbolic ceiling gets smashed – are only visible in hindsight and sometimes they happen right out in plain sight. All the way over in New Zealand I felt those zeigeisty chills when listening to Barak Obama’s victory speech in 2008 signalling the start of something startling and new. I remember a smaller and yet also deeply satisfying moment when New Zealand elected the world’s first transgender Member of Parliament and also when we passed our marriage equality law in a series of parliamentary speeches that suddenly united all parliamentary factions.
Yesterday was one of those days, when New Zealand collectively stopped and (almost) universally celebrated the news that our trailblazing new Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is expecting her first child and will become only the second Prime Minister (after Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan) to give birth while in office.
If you want to watch the feelgood moment, start here.
What felt so good about yesterday was that it felt so… normal! It would have been simply unimaginable in my childhood, or even through most of my adulthood, for a young woman to be Prime Minister of New Zealand. Let alone to have a baby, or that she isn’t married to her long-term partner, or that he (the popular producer of a fishing show on TV) is so excited about becoming primary caregiver, or that folks from across the political world universally and unreservedly celebrated this moment. It was a zeiteisty moment taking place in front of our eyes, a normalisation of ‘everday equality’: that women have babies and hold down jobs and that bearing children isn’t a medical impairment or disqualification from doing important other work as well. And that this is incredibly exciting news for a happy young couple who had given up almost all hope of ever having children.
A Guardian editorial today captured the political moment perfectly:
Of course it ought not to be news that someone with an important job has a baby and then gets on with their work while their partner gets on with the childcare. Men do it all the time. Even some women do, if they are rich and powerful enough to turn their childcare over to paid help. But the announcement by Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, that she will have a child, take six weeks’ parental leave, and then leave the bulk of the childcare to her partner, Clarke Gayford, is still important. It’s an assertion of everyday equality from the first country in the world to give women the vote.
Ms Ardern and Mr Gayford are not exactly a couple like any other: she’s the prime minister, and he’s a television presenter, whose show centres on him killing and eating fish. But their relative prominence makes the impact of their decision greater. Even Mr Gayford’s screen persona as a macho outdoor man increases the significance of their announcement. It demonstrates that they recognise there’s an important sense in which neither of their high-powered jobs is going to be as influential as the work they do as parents.
The bottom line message of normalisation of the challenge of balancing parenthood and career, and the absolute determination that nothing should stop the political leader of New Zealand being both a good Prime Minister and an engaged mother resonates for so many people who balance these kinds of choices in every walk of life.
For me, however, there is also something about the story itself that brought a few tears and plenty of laughter into living rooms all around New Zealand as the first couple opened up about their remarkable last few months. Ardern and her partner Clarke Gayford had wanted a family for some time and early last year were told that their only option would likely be fertility treatment. When the 37 year old Ardern was suddenly called on to lead the Labour Party in the middle of an eleaction campaign (ultimately leading them all the way into government) in August, 2017 she and her partner decided that fate was taking their lives down another path and that the time it would take for IVF was now never likely to happen. Who amongst us doesn’t have family or friends who have travelled down that path of struggling with fertility issues? The absolute unalloyed joy of that young couple opening up about their excitement at having their dream of parenthood finally fulfilled brought a tear to many an eye.
There is also something about the power of serendipity that just overwhelms political calculus and planning. It was only six days before the dramatic conclusion of the post-election negotiations that would crown her as New Zealand’s new Prime Minister she found out that a ‘happy surprize’ had happened. Nature had thrown a huge curve-ball into their lives in a completely unanticipated way. There is no way in which you could politically pre-plan, anticipate, prepare the spin and consider how to respond all the potential critique (which already had happened because even right wing media trolls occasionally sometimes get their timing accidentally correct — even if Jacinda’s take-down of this particuliar troll was epic!). But I think this is what made this situation work out in a way that is so inspirational — there was no plan, so just make it work! Ardern simply got on with the business of forming a government… and she and her partner worked out what would need to happen for them to be parents and for her to be Prime Minister.
By the time the big secret was revealed yesterday, the confrontingly transformative moment was upon us and yet also completely normalised and OK. She already had the deadly come-back line prepared for those who might worry that being pregnant might impair her ability to be Prime Minister – she’d already put together a new government while battling chronic morning sickness and no-one had guessed:
Six days before becoming New Zealand’s prime minister-elect, the Labour leader discovered she was pregnant, but was desperate to keep it, and the accompanying morning sickness, a secret during the post-election maelstrom.
Asked how she managed, Ardern replied: “It’s just what ladies do”, evoking the sympathy of women the world over who just get on with it while struggling with first-trimester nausea.
The 37-year-old worried her staff might notice she was eating constantly, and only the same foods. “But no,” she revealed, “apparently people thought I was just a woman of odd habits,”
Even the big reveal yesterday (and in the case of New Zealand, it is OK for important things by political leaders to be announced on social media!) touched a chord for New Zealanders:
It is a cute image, but also deeply symbolic. The baby’s father is a fanatical fisherman and produces a popular fishing show on TV, But, more importantly, in Maori culture, the fishhook is a symbol of good luck, bounty and fertility. And we like the cute little fishhook and the fact that the big fishhooks are ‘spooning’!
And at the heart of the matter is the fundamental importance of how countries treat their children:
The proud parents-to-be shared how they were always motivated to have a family and wanted to make sure New Zealand was the best country in the world to be a child.
"How great it would be for us all to have the pride of knowing that we as a country are one of the best countries to be a child," Ardern said…
And her raft of new policies – including a significant increase in paid parental leave and other direct interventions to assist children and families in poverty – are targeted exactly towards that. An essential political rebuke to those who think that progressive policies and ‘family values’ are two different things.
Or to put it more simply, in the words of a visiting UK comedian Jimmy Carr who is touring NZ at the moment and shared a TV moment with Jacinda Ardern last week:
"You'll be fine. I love you. You're like the opposite of Trump."
Which makes it two moments in the last week in which New Zealanders were united in agreement about our fabulous new Prime Minister.
Saturday, Jan 20, 2018 · 5:43:29 AM +00:00 · smelly pirate
My impeccably positioned Kiwi confidant has suggested that I also give a shout-out to the four new Members of Parliament (and the rather more surprizing Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard) who unofficially term themselves the ‘maternity wing’ of parliament (and represent several parties across the political spectrum). For an excellent article celebrating the culture change they are now bringing to how parliament now operates see this coverage from last November when the new Parliament sat (plus a shout-out to the proudly breastfeeding Australian senator Larrisa Waters who really made a statement in Australia early last year).
But for serious cuteness, have a look at this video of Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard and new MP Willow Jean Prime’s baby Heeni!
It isn’t only Jacinda Ardern demonstrating the power of ‘everyday equality’ for women in politics!