Ardern recalls ‘the best’ motherhood advice from Queen

LONDON: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the best advice the late Queen gave her on becoming a leader and a mother was ‘‘you just get on with it’’.

Ardern, in London for the Queen’s funeral, became the first woman in New Zealand’s history to give birth while in office when she had her daughter, Neve, in 2018.

She was pregnant when she first met the Queen.

The Queen, who already had two children when she came to the throne in 1952 aged 25, had two more children during her reign and so had good advice, Ardern said.

‘‘When you think about leaders who have been in that position, there was Benazir Bhutto — who gave birth while president of

Pakistan in 1990 — [and] there was myself. But before that, there was the Queen. There were so few to look to,’’ Ardern told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

‘‘And so I said to her, how did you, how did you manage? She just said, ‘well, you just get on with it’.

‘‘And that was actually probably the best and most, I think, factual advice I could have.

‘‘You do [just get on with it]. You just take every day as it comes, and she did. But I have such respect for her because I see now what it takes to be a mum and a leader.’’

The Queen’s children — Charles, born in 1948; Anne, in 1950; Andrew, in 1960; and Edward in 1964 — have acknowledged and paid tribute to her dual roles as mother and monarch over her 70year reign.

‘‘Dear Mummy, Mother, Your Majesty, three in one,’’ Andrew said in a statement yesterday.

‘‘Mother — of the nation, your devotion and personal service to our nation is unique and singular . . . Mummy, your love for a son, your compassion, your care, your confidence I will treasure forever.’’ — Reuters