LONDON – Instagram posts, national excitement and well-wishing frompolitical rivals: Jacinda Ardern’s journey to motherhood was very differentto that made three decades earlier by Pakistani Prime Minister BenazirBhutto, the only other world leader to have given birth while in office.
Ardern’s daughter came into the worldlink>onThursday, 28 years after the late Bhutto’s daughter Bakhtawar was born.
New Zealand’s youngest-ever prime minister announced her pregnancy inJanuary, posting a symbolic photo on social media and sparking warm wordsfrom across the political spectrum.
“I’ll be prime minister and a mum,” she said on Facebook, adding that herpartner Clarke Gayford, who hosts a television fishing show, would be a“stay-at-home dad”.
“I think it’s fair to say that this will be a wee one that a village willraise, but we couldn’t be more excited,” she added.
The intervening months have seen a frenzy of excitement from NewZealanders, many of whom took to the web on Thursday to express theirhappiness.
Twitter user @zaichishka, who describes herself as a Welsh-Kiwi, wrote:“4.693 million New Zealanders (give or take) just became aunts and uncles.”
It was all a far cry from 1990, when Bhutto, the first woman to head ademocratic government in a Muslim-majority nation, told almost no-one shewas pregnant until Bakhtawar was born on January 25.
“None of us in the cabinet virtually knew that this prime minister wasabout to deliver a baby,” Javed Jabbar, a member of her cabinet, told theBBC recently.
“And then lo-and-behold suddenly we learn that she has not only gone anddelivered democracy she’s also delivered a baby.”
Opposition leader Syeda Abida Hussain had called Bhutto “greedy” forwanting to have “motherhood, domesticity, glamour, and wholeresponsibility” rather than make sacrifices for her country.
News that Ardern was expecting prompted then New Zealand opposition leaderBill English to send his congratulations and hope that she was given “thespace to be able to conduct relatively normal family life”.
He said Ardern should be allowed to acclimatise to motherhood and not beheld to higher standards because she was prime minister.
“It is an incredible privilege to be a parent. A new child will bring realjoy to their lives. We wish them all the best,” he said.
*Defining moment*
Ardern will be taking six weeks maternity leave before returning to office,with her deputy Winston Peters assuming the reins, although she will remainon call for any matters of significance.
In contrast, Bhutto, fearing she was in danger of being overthrown,travelled incognito to a Karachi hospital, underwent a Caesarean section,then returned to work.
“The next day I was back on the job, reading government papers and signinggovernment files,” she later wrote.
“Only later did I learn that I was the only head of government in recordedhistory actually to give birth while in office.
“It was a defining moment, especially for young women, proving that a womancould work and have a baby in the highest and most challenging leadershippositions.”
Bhutto, however, was dismissed from office eight months later. She returnedas prime minister from 1993 to 1996 and was assassinated in 2007.
Had she lived, Thursday would have been her birthday.
James Shaw, the leader of New Zealand’s Green Party, which is a member ofNew Zealand’s ruling coalition with Ardern’s Labour Party and New ZealandFirst, said the birth of the prime minister’s child represented New Zealandvalues.
“That a woman can be the prime minister of New Zealand and choose to have afamily while in office says a lot about the kind of country we are and thatwe can be — modern, progressive, inclusive, and equal,” Shaw said.