Jacinda Ardern opens up about juggling politics and parenting

Jacinda Ardern has opened up about the internal struggle she felt while serving as New Zealand prime minister and raising her first child, daughter Neve.

The former politician spoke to mother-daughter duo singer Jessie Ware and her mum Lennie on their podcast Table Manners, while promoting her new memoir, A Different Kind of Power.

The mum-of-one said being only the second female leader in the world to welcome a child while in office (after Benazir Bhutto) put an unexpected pressure on her.

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“The thing that was really tough was having that experience, but also feeling like I couldn’t really talk about that experience because, women are multitasking all the time, every day, they are doing all of the things that are expected of them, with morning sickness and with many other issues going on in their lives,” Ardern said.

“And I felt like I’m only the second leader in the world to have a baby while in office. I’m pushing the boundaries out.

“I didn’t feel like I could talk openly about the experiences of pregnancy in office, because it was enough that I was doing it.

“If it ever looked like it was hard, or if it was looking like it was affecting my job, I thought that would be a disservice to women.”

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Ardern said it was a fine line though, as she wanted to make sure it didn’t create an “impossible standard” and was conscious to hero the “whole village” who helped her.

“You want to show that you can do it,” she told Jessie and Lennie.

“Of course, no one should question that a woman should be able to have a leadership role and still be a mother. But in trying to prove that, you then feel like you can’t actually demonstrate the realities of it, or that you are meant to look like you’re superhuman.

“I remember not wanting to give that perception, though, because I didn’t want to create this impossible standard.

“I don’t do it all. And that was a real moment for me to think about, how do I put on display more that actually Clarke (her husband) is the one looking after Neve most of the time.

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“My mother and my mother in law helped me a lot, even my colleagues, while Neve was being breastfed, they would hand her around in meetings, I had a whole village!

“And I started to think about, how can I put that village on display so that I’m not creating an impossible standard that just no one should be expected to meet.”

Ardern, who welcomed Neve in June 2018, said she definitely felt parent guilt in missing out on moments while she was working.

“If any job is going to give you a reason to not feel the weight of guilt as much, it would probably be running a country,” she said.

“I’m doing something important, and yet I still felt the guilt. I think I came to terms with the fact that I’ll always feel it. It’s just there.

“I think when they hand you a baby, they give you your allocation of parental guilt, and you’ll just experience it at different points and different inflictions, but it’s always there.”

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