Hope, humility and fine values
Every child who is born is an expression of hope. Individual hope, collective hope, a simple belief that the future may be worth living in.
It can be easy to lose sight of hope when the international news is as distressing as it has been this week. At almost the precise moment that the New Zealand public learned that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was in labour at Auckland Hospital, the Detroit Free Press reported that two baby boys aged just 8 months and 11 months were in a group of 50 immigrant children who arrived in Michigan without their parents, as part of the notorious ‘‘zero tolerance’’ immigration policy.
Traumatised children shifted across country in the dead of night – that is a hellish image to contrast with the joy of a new life. President Donald Trump appeared to give in to public pressure when he signed an executive order ending child separation, and it seemed apt that one of Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ first acts as acting prime minister of New Zealand was to welcome the policy change.
The separation policy, Peters said, was ‘‘simply not a humanitarian approach’’.
There are other synchronicities that seem strangely auspicious. June 21 is also the birthday of former Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto, who, in 1990, became the first prime minister to give birth in office. Her daughter was named Bakhtawar, meaning the one who brings glad tidings.
The Ardern-Gayford baby also arrives within Matariki, the Ma¯ ori new year, which is a time for remembering the dead and celebrating new life.
But to talk like this, to read signs and symbolism into the birth, is also to assume that the baby is somehow common property. How do we avoid making this mistake? There is no protocol or tradition to observe. No-one can recall a male prime minister of New Zealand becoming a father in office and there has been no other ‘‘royal baby’’ in our history – despite the efforts of women’s magazines, no baby from the worlds of show business or sport has had this profile.
There needs to be an understanding of boundaries and expectations of privacy. Pregnant women get used to becoming public property, as everyone feels entitled to make small talk about due dates, morning sickness or sleeping patterns, and Ardern has had to endure that at a national, even international level. To say that she handled it with grace and style is an understatement.
The photo of a gloriously pregnant Ardern with her partner at Buckingham Palace, wearing a traditional Ma¯ ori cloak, is not just one of the defining images of her prime ministership but an image that spoke volumes about the best New Zealand values. There was biculturalism, there was ease and humility, there was the freshness of the new world contrasted with the traditions of the old.
In an unmarried prime minister who gets to take maternity leave, we could see the progressive, tolerant, open-minded nation we like to think we are.
This is a strange and unprecedented moment. It puts us on the world stage for the right reasons, as we were in 1893 or 1985, but it is also a deeply private moment for a young family. We can feel both proud and protective. But we should also tread carefully.
In an unmarried prime minister who gets to take maternity leave, we could see the progressive, tolerant, open-minded nation we like to think we are.