The PM and the new baby
Congratulations, Jacinda. When your special news came through yesterday, politicians forgot about politics, at least for a little while, and most voters wished you and your partner and new baby well. And so do we.
The political effects of the prime minister’s pregnancy, on the other hand, are endlessly fascinating. The feel-good factor is huge. Women leaders rarely have babies while in office. Male prime ministers don’t produce children very often either.
When British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s wife Cherie Booth had son Leo in 2001, Labour Britain’s ‘‘cool Britannia’’ reputation got a great boost. And Jacindamania stepped up another notch yesterday too.
Prime ministers and their families can’t help being role models, and here the symbolism is also welcome.
Partner Clarke Gayford will be a stay-at-home father after the PM goes back to work, and that remains a rarity despite big changes in our usual gender roles.
Ardern says she’s not the first woman to do multi-tasking, and here she brings good news for working women. She will also admit that she has resources that many other working women do not, even though her job is the most demanding in the country.
But she will still be able to increase the understanding of employers and the public generally about the dilemmas and tensions faced by working women.
Those problems remain intensely real and are still too often slighted or ignored both by employers and politicians.
The Ardern-gayfords are almost an emblem of the modern family: Parents who are older and still unmarried, despite the pregnancy.
There is a striking contrast with Helen Clark, Ardern’s predecessor as Labour PM.
Clark felt she had to marry her long-standing partner Peter Davis when she became an MP, although she didn’t want to.
Nowadays, almost no-one would expect either a woman or a male MP to do so, and that is a good thing.
The same deepening social liberalism now gives to gay couples the marriage rights that straight people have always taken for granted.
In a world where so many reactionary forces seem to be on the rise, new parts of the liberal revolution continue to blossom.
New Zealand doesn’t have a tradition of ‘‘First Lady’’ or First Family, let alone ‘‘First Man’’. On the whole, that’s a strength. We don’t treat our prime ministerial families as a kind of substitute royal family.
The spouses of prime ministers can be as public or as private as they choose.
The case of the Blairs and young Leo is also a reminder, on the other hand, that politics continues its rough and troubled way despite the good news about prime ministerial babies.
The fight goes on, despite the happy interlude.