As prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern juggled leadership and motherhood
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Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. When heads of state write memoirs, they can make the job seem a bit lofty. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's an important job. It's a hard job. But it is, at the end of the day, a job.

What I found refreshing about today's interview with Jacinda Ardern, the former prime minister of New Zealand, is that she doesn't treat the position with pretentiousness. It was a gig she wanted, and when it was time to go, she left. Her new memoir is titled A Different Kind of Power, and in it, she writes about the comments and attitudes she had to overcome as a young woman and mother who also happened to be the prime minister.

Up ahead, she talks to NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about all that and how she feels now that she's outside of politics. This message comes from BetterHelp. June is Men's Mental Health Month, and every year, 6 million men in the U.S. suffer from depression. If you're feeling overwhelmed, the strongest thing you can do is ask for help, and BetterHelp can make it easy.

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Jacinda Ardern tells a story about being locked in a political campaign seven weeks to go before elections, and she's about to do a TV news interview. Ardern had just taken over as leader of the Labour Party in New Zealand. If they won,

she would become prime minister. And as she waited for her live hit, she listened as the male sports anchor opined that she and all women seeking new jobs should be open about their reproductive plans. That was the bit that got me.

And I think that was because I talked openly about wanting a family. But to assert that any woman should be asked that, I really rebelled against that. That upset me. What did you do? Well, I pulled out my index finger and I pointed at him quite a lot. Whilst really clearly asserting, you can ask me that question, but it

Jacinda Ardern's party won the election, she became prime minister, and she describes that 2017 TV exchange in her new memoir, A Different Kind of Power. It's one of many moments that let you glimpse what it was like to be a young woman running a country.

When I sat down with Ardern yesterday, I also asked about a moment that took place a few weeks later in a bathroom. You're sitting on the closed seat of the toilet. Toilet, yeah. It's very glamorous. And you're scared to death because you're waiting to learn two things. Yeah. What were they? Uh-huh.

So this was right in the middle of coalition negotiations. Our systems are like the German one. You don't always know on election night if you've won or not. So I was waiting to find out whether or not I was going to become the prime minister of New Zealand. And in that moment, I was also waiting to find out if I was pregnant. Quite a time. Yeah. Yeah. Many of us who have been pregnant have battled morning sickness. Yes. Few of us had to run a country while doing so.

I loved your line about that it was salt and vinegar potato chips that got you through. It was Cheetos for me. I can never eat them again. I don't know if you can still face salt and vinegar, Chris. I was also thinking, and you capture, there were very few people you could ask. You were only the second person.

to give birth while holding elected office at the top of a government. Benazir Bhutto was the first. Yes, that's right. You asked Queen Elizabeth. I did ask Queen Elizabeth. And, you know, really, she just completely straight-faced. She just said, well, you just get on with it. And there was just something about that. I thought, well, it'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. 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. But you found, and I could so relate to this, that as your daughter grew up,

You found the juggle getting harder. Yeah. You were weighing what you were missing with her. Yeah. And it weighed more heavily as she got bigger. Yeah. And actually, I mean, I found that, you know, in a way, as difficult as I found it, breastfeeding was an excuse to have her with me, you know. But actually, as she got older, it was less practical. 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. Nor was I going to send a message to any woman that you can't do both. You can. 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. It's painful. It's the takeaway that we're going to feel guilty no matter what choices we make. Absolutely correct. So you might as well go do what you came to do. We might as well flip it to think about what we want for our own children. And we want for them to have fulfilling lives as if they choose, parents, and careers if they choose. Why don't we give ourselves that same grace?

Before people start writing in yelling at me, why are you asking her these questions? Would you ask the same thing of a 40-something male leader? Yes, I would. But I'm asking you specifically because you write so honestly and such a raw way about what that struggle that I think every working parent has dealt with to the point where...

you're getting a breast screening. They see something or feel something that raises questions. You might have cancer. And describe what is going through your head. Yeah. And I think someone asked me, why are you only talking about this at this point, given the proximity to when you left office? And it was because actually it wasn't a determinative factor for me. But it was the first moment that I started thinking, what would I do in those circumstances whilst being in this job? And it invited the question of,

But I guess I'm curious, what had changed in your thinking that...

Your reaction to a possible diagnosis of cancer wasn't, oh my God, I might have cancer, but was, oh my God, I might get to leave. I might get to be done. Yeah. That's a really significant shift. It is. And I knew that that wasn't a great way to see that piece of information. And that's what gave me pause to think about it. But as I was writing about it, I know exactly what was happening. I ended up in this role because that battle that I always had between whether or not I felt like I was...

equipped with all of the skills needed to be a leader, which I never believed myself to hold, and that sense of responsibility just happened to be in my case, my sense of responsibility always won out. That was what brought me into the role. And it was only when I had a piece of information that

that allowed myself to get beyond my sense of responsibility, that I started entertaining the idea of leaving. And it wasn't in that moment for a selfish reason, but rather potentially a medical one. So it just started a thought process that I hadn't allowed myself to have until then. It opened the door to that possibility. So how do you know?

When it's time to go. When you're in a job you worked really hard to get and you love. You can tell you loved it. And I did love it. And there's so much about it that I miss, but I at the same time don't regret the decision. You've always got to have a bit of extra, you know, in case there's crisis. And for us, we had a biosecurity incursion, a volcanic eruption, a horrific domestic terror attack, and then the pandemic. I knew I needed more in reserves than what I had.

You write about a question that your daughter, I think she was five by this point, or roundabout, you two were walking home from daycare. And she asked why you had stepped down as prime minister. How would you explain it to her, to a child? Yeah, and it's a great question. I gave her a version of what I'd kind of said at the time, because it was my honest view. And it was, as I've already explained, I just did it in a more user-friendly way. And then she just said to me, but

Mummy, we never give up. And suddenly I was mortified at the idea that that might have been what she thought. You know, for me, politics is an incredible place to be useful, to make change, to address injustice, but it's not the only place. And so 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 and 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. Oh, I'm never giving up. Jacinda Ardern was Prime Minister of New Zealand from 2017 to 2023. Her memoir is A Different Kind of Power.

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