In 2017, Jacinda Ardern, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, was sitting in her bathroom anxiously anticipating the news of two potentially life-changing events.
One, the election results that could make her the youngest female head of government in the world. And the other, a pregnancy test that could not only make her a first-time mother, but determine how she might spend the first few months of her tenure.
Ardern won the election and gave birth to a daughter later that year. Her term included her wading through motherhood in the public eye and guiding the country through a devastating mass shooting. After several years in office, Ardern stepped down saying she “no longer had enough in the tank” to continue fulfilling the role.
Ardern reflects on these moments and more in her new memoir, A Different Kind of Power. She joined All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly to discuss that pivotal time and the lessons she took from her time in politics.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Reflecting on the deadly mass shooting in 2019 that led to New Zealand’s sweeping gun reform laws:
Jacinda Ardern: I remember the day after the attack, the police commissioner confirming for us that the weapons, as far as they could tell at that stage, had been legally acquired. And it felt like being punched in the stomach because there was…
Mary Louise Kelly: We let this happen.
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Ardern: Yeah. There was an air of, you know, the moment your laws create a permission space, you feel, you know, complicit almost in a way. You certainly as much as I mean, I already felt a responsibility to respond, but in that moment, there was you know, it set squarely with us.
We weren’t a coalition government. I didn’t know if we had the numbers to pass a change in law, but I just instinctively felt that New Zealanders would support a change because they would have that same mentality we had, which is never again, let’s do everything we can.
So, I went to a press conference immediately after and said that our gun laws needed to change and then it was a matter of working through how and what that would look like. And here I have to really credit John Howard, an Australian Prime Minister who predated me, a conservative Prime Minister who had his own experience and Australia’s own experience with mass gun violence and in what something was called the Port Arthur massacre.
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And after that they changed the gun laws by removing access to military style and semiautomatic weapons and they coupled it with a buyback. So, their view was you legally acquired them and so the state will compensate the return, but from there we make them illegal. So we had a model.
Why reinvent the wheel. It enabled us to move quickly. And so, we introduced law and took 10 days to debate it and pass it.
In all, 27 days, roughly after the attack, we had moved to ban semi-automatic and military style weapons in New Zealand.
On seeking advice for juggling pregnancy and motherhood while being head of state:
Mary Louise Kelly: You were only the second person to give birth while holding elected office at the top of a government. Benazir Bhutto (former Prime Minister of Pakistan) was the first.
Ardern: Yes, that’s right. And of course, she had passed. There was no one to ask.
Kelly: You asked Queen Elizabeth.
Ardern: I did ask Queen Elizabeth.
Well, if you are hanging around thinking, “Who’s a woman you know is multitasking motherhood with leadership?” I mean, Queen Elizabeth was probably not quite the same as being the prime minister of a country of 5 million people, but I took the opportunity and she just completely straight-faced said, “Well, you just get on with it.”
And it was just something about that. I thought, well, that’s true, because actually when you break it down in any role, any parent who is working and raising children, it’s a matter of logistics. It’s logistics and every day is one foot in front of the other. It’s getting on with it. And that turned out to be true. There was no magic to it. You just had to make it work.
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Kelly: You got on with it, with the help of your husband and many others. But you found, and I could so relate to this, that as your daughter grew, you found the juggle getting harder.
Ardern: Yeah. I found that in a way, as difficult as I found it, breastfeeding was an excuse to have her with me. But actually, as she got older, it was less practical.
And so you were having to just deal with the fact you’re always going to be away for longer periods of time. And over time she became more aware of it, as well.
But I was also at the same time really clear that when I left, that was not a decision that was about, “It is too hard to be a mother and to do this role.”
There was no way that I was going to place the weight of that decision on her. That was unfair. Nor was I going to send a message to any woman that you can’t do both. You can.
Because actually the mother guilt that I have now that I’m around more is just the same as what I had then. It doesn’t go away. It’s the price you pay of being a parent and probably having that perspective has been really helpful, as well.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addresses parliament in Wellington, New Zealand in May 2018. Ardern was the second world leader to give birth while holding office. Nick Perry/AP hide caption
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On explaining her resignation to her daughter:
Ardern: I gave her a version of what I had kind of said at the time, because it was my honest view.
And then she just said to me, “But mummy, we never give up.”
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And suddenly I was mortified at the idea that that might have been what she thought. That by departing, that was somehow giving up. For me, politics is an incredible place to be useful, to make change, to address injustice. But it’s not the only place. For anyone who feels like politics is so representative about the direction of travel for community, for society, it is not the only place.
I spent 15 years in politics. In the majority, I was in opposition. And every day I was motivated by what I saw amongst people in communities that was in spite sometimes of what they might have seen at a leadership level. So, I guess I’d say to anyone the same thing I said to her, “I’m never giving up.”
This interview was adapted for the web by Manuela López Restrepo and edited by Karen Zamora.
