The New Zealand PM’s new baby ‘Niamh’ meets her public
NEW Zealand’s Prime Minister was in sparkling mood yesterday as she showed off her new-born baby girl – who has an Irish name.
Jacinda Ardern is the second elected world leader ever to give birth in office and
the country’s media has already nicknamed the infant, ‘the prime miniature’.
Four-day-old Neve Te Aroha wore a fashionable green beanie hat to meet the public for the first time. Her name is a phonetic spelling of the Irish name Niamh, meaning ‘bright’ or ‘radiant’, and Te Aroha, which means ‘love’ in M ori, the native New Zealand language.
Outside Auckland City Hospital, Ms Ardern, who remained in office throughout her pregnancy, thanked the public for their support as her daughter slept snuggled in her arms. The prime minister said: ‘We really just wanted to say “thank you” and that we’re all doing really well. Sleep deprived, but really well.’
The premier was due to leave the hospital yesterday, after arriving early on Thursday. She plans to be back at her desk in just six weeks.
‘I hope for little girls and boys that there is a future where they can make choices about how they raise their family and what sort of career they have, which is based on what they want and what makes them happy,’ she added.
The child’s name is also a tribute to Te Aroha mountain, on New Zealand’s North Island, near Jacinda’s hometown of Hamilton. She explained: ‘It’s the place where all my family are from. I grew up under that mountain.’
Proud dad Clarke Gayford said he will take one special memory home of when his partner first held Neve.
He added: ‘She had obviously been through so much and she just looked so happy.’
HATS off to Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand who has just given birth to a bouncing baby girl. The 37-year-old politician, who is only the second world leader to have a child while in office (for the record, the late Benazir Bhutto, of Pakistan, was the first woman to do so), left hospital yesterday in a glow of maternal happiness and amid a national mood of new baby-induced euphoria.
Ardern’s office announced that she will take the next six weeks off to bond with her baby, while her partner will take on the role of full-time dad. Their plan is that he will travel with Ardern between their Auckland home and the capital, Wellington, as well as on international engagements.
‘Hopefully these things that in these moments now are… a novelty… one day they aren’t new any more,’ said Ms Ardern, who was clearly not too lost in newborn baby fog to emphasise the significance of her domestic set up for gender equality.
‘I hope for little girls and boys that actually there’s a future where they can make choices about how they raise their family and what kind of career they have that are based on what they want and what makes them happy,’ she added.
Given her views, Ms Ardern would doubtless approve of the progressive proposals from the Oireachtas to make politics a more palatable career for women. As outlined in a report in The Irish Mail on Sunday, a new scheme is planned to allow new mothers in the Dáil and Seanad to hire an extra parliamentary assistant for six months after the birth to help with their Dáil and constituency work while they focus on their newborn.
According to the report, the scheme ‘will allow her to turn up for crucial issues such as Budget debates and Dáil votes, and maintain a presence in her constituency’.
The proposals, which also allow for breastfeeding in the Dáil and Seanad, will hopefully help break down the barriers that prevent female involvement in active politics and raise female representation in the Dáil and Seanad from the current levels of 22% and 32% respectively.
While demand grows for gender balance on boards, in Government and even at summer schools that no-one outside the cognoscenti pays a blind bit of attention to, any move designed to help women participate more fully in male-dominated careers is automatically welcome.
In that sense, Ms Ardern’s pregnancy is a symbol of progress for women, while she is an inspiration to women not to foland low the age-old example set by highachieving females such as Angela Merkel or Theresa May, or indeed some of our own formerly prominent female TDs, who appeared to sacrifice personal fulfilment in order to pursue high-powered career goals.
But just as the egg-freezing and fertility benefits introduced by Silicon Valley companies to attract talented female executives to their ranks have led to charges of their encouraging women to delay motherhood until it’s convenient for their employers instead of just suiting themselves, role models like Ms Ardern can potentially, and through no fault of their own, become a double-edged sword.
Pressures
In the first place, Ms Ardern has advantages most mothers can only dream of. With her partner willing to become a stay-at-home dad, she is in an extremely privileged position and has a level of freedom to pursue her work goals that, in the main, is the preserve of fathers.
While it’s wonderful to see modern dads not just sharing but taking on full responsibility for the domestic sphere, the reality is that the role reversal in the Ardern household is still rare, and in most cases completely unattainable given how economic pressures force families to have dual incomes.
But the New Zealand prime minister is fortunate in other, more important ways. Her baby is healthy, so she does not have to spend anxious weeks in an intensive care unit like the mothers of sickly or premature babies.
Given that she posted on social media after her labour and held a brief press conference at the hospital door, she’s clearly back to herself, so she has been lucky too on that score.
When Kate Middleton left hospital recently after giving birth, she was widely criticised for her immaculate grooming high heels. She was accused of raising the bar too high for new mothers, who are mostly too exhausted and shellshocked by childbirth to be camera-ready.
A campaign went viral featuring swiveleyed new mums slumped across their pillows or shuffling like bag ladies towards their baby cribs. The subliminal message was to ‘keep it real’.
Ms Ardern’s assurances about still being in charge of her country and being back behind her desk in six weeks show admirable worth ethic and determination, but it’s important to realise that as with Kate Middleton’s post-birth glow, not every women would choose to follow her lead. And nor should they feel pressure to do so.
Sadly it’s unavoidable that some new mothers will suffer from post-natal depression and be in no state to put their best foot forward, so to speak.
Other mothers believe that the newborn stage is too short and precious to be distracted by external factors. Our armies of so-called earth mothers will want to devote themselves wholly to their baby for maybe months or years on end.
As with the vexed question of breastfeeding, there is no right or wrong way of being a mother; depending on your point of view, Ms Ardern’s return to work as soon as possible after birth may be profoundly inspirational, or it may be a harsh denial of the natural mothering instinct to care for her young.
All we can do is allow mothers make the right choice for them.
Most of us cannot imagine the enormous strains that rest on the shoulders of political leaders, and how those pressures must be magnified with small children. For instance, the shortcomings of the radical measures announced by the Oireachtas to give new mothers an extra parliamentary assistant are already becoming apparent.
As any grassroots politicians knows, unless a public representative has a high national profile, their political survival depends on being seen constantly around their constituency, pitching up at funerals, chairing public meetings and so forth. No surrogate parliamentary assistant no matter how helpful and charming will ever compensate for their absence.
As with any ultra-demanding job that demands visibility and long hours, there exists no panacea about making life easy for politicians who have small children, which is effectively a second full-time job.
Every little bit helps, whether it’s an extra parliamentary assistant or the example set by the New Zealand prime minister, when it comes to breaking down the prejudice and opening up possibilities for career-driven women.
But make no mistake: the road ahead for Jacinda Ardern is a hard slog, and not one every new mother wants to emulate.