SMNTY Classics: Jacinda Ardern

Meet the New Zealand Prime Minister Who Gave Birth in Office in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stephane
never told you a production of iHeartRadio. We're a bit
behind the loop on this one because we've kind of
pushed off our classics. We have a couple coming up

(00:26):
that are news based, but we're like a month behind.
But this first one is about just Into Arderne, who's
the Prime Minister of New Zealand, who announced fairly recently,
pretty suddenly, that she was going to resign her position,
and it sparked this whole conversation about burnout, because essentially

(00:49):
that's what she said was I don't have enough gas
and to think anymore to keep doing this and doing
it well. And then she talked about like, hey, let's
get married with her husband, who who is a celebrity
by the way, And there was some controversy in Wellington
Paranormal because he's in an episode of Wellington Paranormal and
people thought it was some kind of political move. Oh really, yes, yes,

(01:12):
he's in the kind of like giant Sea Monster one
because I think he's like a fisher. Yeah yeah, funny, Yeah. Yeah.
It's got a whole section on their Wikipedia because when
I was just kind of like when are the new
episodes coming out? I looked like this controversy, but me
and Bridget did this episode a while back because she

(01:36):
was one of Barry. She's the second world leader I
believe to give birth an office. So it also started
a whole conversation about that's and about pregnancy discrimination and
just discrimination against women in general when they have kids
and what they can do. And then also we've seen
a lot with her COVID response compared to who the

(01:58):
rest of the world, but especially the US. So it's
always we do have a bunch of people kind of
lined up that we're going to have classics and updates
about them. You know, nobody's perfect. There's always problematic things,
but there are reasons we wanted to talk about them.
So please enjoy this classic episode. Hi, this is Annie

(02:21):
and this is a Bridget and you're listening to Steph Mom.
Never told you quick warning, just so y'all know you
can probably tell from my voice I'm under the weather,
so I'm a bit smiff Lee and that more raspy

(02:43):
than usual. Just FBYI podcasting wall sick. I'm a professional.
Let's do this. You are a professional, Bridget, and another
professional is the subject of this episode today, and that
is New Zealand Prime Minister just Send our Dern. Our
Dern was a like in October of twenty seventeen, the
youngest prime minister the country has had since eighteen fifty six.

(03:06):
And if you haven't heard, she gave birth in June
to a healthy baby girl. And she is only the
second world leader to do so while in office. Wow,
that actually surprises me. On the one hand, good for her,
but to only be the second person to do that
is is surprising to me. I'm like, oh, I would
have assumed there have been more considering childbirth is a

(03:28):
thing that we do. It's like we've spoken about before,
Bridget where it's good, but it's sad that it's so good,
you know, like it's it shouldn't be only the second.
That's kind of shocking, but that is the case. She

(03:50):
arrived to a public hospital in her own car, driven
by her partner. She's the first leader to ever take
maternity leave. She's going to be consulted and continue to
read cabinet papers while she's away for six weeks. But yeah,
she's taking a maternity leave. Good for her. Right. In
an interview with Radio New Zealand. She said, I am

(04:11):
not the first woman to multitask. I am not the
first woman to work and have a baby. There are
many women who have done this before. I love that.
I just love that she's someone with such a big
platform is normalizing that it's okay to be a busy,
successful working woman and also take maternity leave. I think
it was Cheryl Sandberg who made headlines for not taking

(04:33):
maternity leave, and like, you know, if she didn't feel
like she needed it, fine, But I just think a
woman who is successful and driven at a working woman
being like, yeah, I'm taking my leave and you can
do just really models that it's okay. Doesn't mean that you're,
you know, doing a bad job at your job if
you take the time that you need after you have
a baby. No, I would argue that recognizing that you

(04:54):
need that time and that other things than work, surprise, surprise,
are I think that's the mark of a good employee
and someone who is good at their job and recognizes
their limits. I think it's good and I've wanted to
mention her partner is the host of a show called
Fish of the Day, and he's planning on being a
stay at home Dad, and when asked why they're not married,

(05:18):
are Durn answered, it sounds terrible because we're very committed
to each other. Marriage is just not something we've really
gotten around to. We haven't correctly sequenced perhaps, and her
partner Clark Grayford, said he liked that they were doing
everything in reverse. I like that too. I mean, I
mean they are reflective of many, many, many sort of

(05:39):
less traditional couples out there, who are partnered, who lived together,
who don't live together, who who are co parents, Like
I don't know. I think it's cool that they are
illustrating and modeling what we all know is very true
from this living in the world, that not everybody who
has a child is married together, Like there are all
kinds of ways to be a family. Yeah, that too,

(06:00):
I mean we all know it to be true, but
we so rarely see it. I feel so and when
we see it, I think we're like even, I know,
you know that this thing, this kind of thing exists,
But when I encounter it myself, I'm like, oh, you're
not married and have a baby. Like it's it's so
hard to break that internal thing that's set up for
by society that says, oh, to have a family, you

(06:21):
have to be married, lived in the same house. Blah
blah blah. Yeah. When I was first reading about this,
because a lot of listeners suggested that we talk about
talk about this, I was like, Oh, she had a
baby in office and she's not married. Wow, this shouldn't
be shocking at all, because there are so many people
that have these situations, very similar situations. Our Dern is

(06:45):
New Zealand's third female prime minister. And if you're wondering
who the first world leader to give birth in office was,
it was Pakistan's at two time Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Both leaders were thirty seven when they gave birth, and
our Deurn's baby was born on what would have been
Bouto's birthday. She was assassinated in two thousand and seven.

(07:07):
And while Bootso hid her pregnancy as long as she could,
Ourdurne let people know six months in advance. So this
is wild. Her pregnancy was such a big secret that
most of her colleagues had no idea that she was
even pregnant until she delivered the baby. A member of
the cabinet said about it quote and then lo and behold,
suddenly we learned that she was not only gone and

(07:27):
delivered democracy, she's also delivered a baby. She got a
cea section and returned the next day, not realizing that
she was the first world leader to have given birth.
And this happened during a time of political turmoil in Pakistan.
After having a baby, she made it through a vote
of no confidence and her government was facing an onslaught
from a military funded right wing alliance. Boutso later said

(07:50):
it was a defining moment, especially for young women, proving
that a woman could work and have a baby in
the highest and most challenging leadership positions. So they're kind
of almost mirror opposites. And she sort of paid her
baby and went right back to where. Yeah, it didn't
take she Charyl Sandburg did it. She didn't take the
Charyl of Samburg did. That's gonna catch on, I know it.

(08:13):
Months later, Bhutto's government was dismissed and a rival came
to power who criticized Bhutto as being quote greedy and
that she was putting motherhood, domesticity and glamor over her
duties to the country. But how because she didn't even
take time off. I think it's because when she was
pregnant with her first child. The leader of the military

(08:36):
sacked the government so that elections would be held when
Bhutto was in the final months of pregnancy and hoped
she would be unable to campaign as effectively. But they
got the date wrong and news of a baby on
the way added excitement to the campaign. Oh my god,
people love a baby. People love a baby. Like when
a celebrity or somebody is pregnant, people are like, oh
my god, she's pregnant. Like that does that doesn't surprise

(08:57):
me that that generated a level of at least one
excitement and publicity, but also maybe a little bit of goodwill. Yeah,
it definitely backfired, and some theories that maybe it didn't
backfire but Bhutto purposefully spread misinformation about her due date.
Oh that's actually diabolical. Have you ever seen the movie
Knocked Up? I have not, so one of the plotlines

(09:20):
and Knocked Up is Katherine Heigl's character is like an
e news journalist and she's an on camera like she
interviewed celebrities and she finds out that she's has an
unplanned pregnancy and she's terrified they're gonna fire her. That
like you know she can't be pregnant on TV. They're
gonna let her go, even though it's technically illegal to
fire somebody for getting pregnant, but we all know it happens,

(09:43):
and she is really surprised to find that they love it.
They love her being pregnant, They love the idea of
her interviewing other pregnant celebs and all of that. So
if this reminds me of that, yeah, I think we've
done an episode on this show before about ba b
mania and why why people get so excited about celebrity

(10:05):
babies in particular, and it goes back a long way,
or maybe maybe other people weren't as surprised by this
as I was. But I remember reading like Royalty. I
guess that's obvious. But back in you know, seventeen hundreds England,
when royals were pregnant, it is very exciting and people
would place bets on the gender and read every bit

(10:25):
of news about it. So it's a it seems to
be kind of a it's not going away. It's not.
It's not. So we have some more to talk about here,
but first we're gonna pause for a quick break for
a word from our sponsor and we're back, thank you sponsor.

(10:53):
Before becoming New Zealand's Prime Minister, our Durn served as
the opposition a labor leader, and on her first day
of the job she was asked, a lot of women
in New Zealand feel like they have to make a
choice between having babies and having a career or continuing
their career. So is that a decision you feel you
have to make or that you feel you've already made.
And when the interview became focused on that and the

(11:17):
right of employers to know if an employee or potential
employee intended to take maternity leave, if it was acceptable
for the Prime Minister to do so instead of policy questions,
our Durn got angry. Quote, it is a woman's decision
about when they choose to have children and it should
not predetermine whether or not they are given a job

(11:37):
or have job opportunities here ourn Yeah, yeah, I just
think that having someone so powerful be the person who
was going through that and saying that and saying yeah, like,
I'll do what I want. It's up to me to
decide what I have a baby. I have body autonomy
and my professional life should be completely separate from that. Yeah,
and after this whole exchange, the uproar that followed propelled

(12:00):
to the front pages in newspapers around the world. She
said that dilmas she faced giving birth to a baby
was no different than the one faced by most women
in the workforce or not in the workforce. Although it
felt like she'd come out of nowhere, she had been
working in politics since her teens and she entered the
New Zealand Parliament at the age of twenty eight. The
excitement fell around the world at her appointment as Prime

(12:23):
Minister has been dubbed just Sinda Mania. We love to
give a catchy nickname the things we do we do.
A group called hashtag knit for Jacinda started a campaign
of knitting baby clothes and blankets for hospitals and shelters
in her honor, which I think is so cute. I
do too. Knitting is something that I always have wanted

(12:44):
to learn, but I put it on the backburner, like
immediately I have the thought you should learn to knit,
and then it immediately is like maybe later. Yeah. I
actually have seen so many interesting cases where knitting is
sort of used as this like radical feminist art of
reclaiming something that's domestic into something like radical, like the
woman who made those pussy hats with the Women's March

(13:05):
or here in DC sometimes things get nit bombed, where
like people will knit things over them, like if it's
an offensive sign or something, someone will like knit something
and like drape it over. We should both. We should.
We should learn how to knit by the end of
the summer, even me. We should, and then we could
do an episode and talk about it, and while we're
podcasting will be knitting because we're women and we can multitask.

(13:27):
Seeing a woman hold this position of power is meaningful.
One of our Durn's favorite things is seeing the faces
of little girls light up when they see her. Quote.
If they see a woman in a job like this
and it has an effect, then that's wonderful. And it
is wonderful. Yeah, I mean, there're probably so many little
girls out there who will be inspired to go into
public office because of her. Yeah, I hope. So when

(13:50):
critics pressed Urdurn about her ability to wear both hats,
she responded, none of them detected. I had a pretty
bad morning sickness for three months of establishing the government.
It's what ladies do. So this could not be more true.
I have this theory that women are more likely than
men to go to work sick because as women, like,

(14:11):
we just need to suck it up and go in
and like you don't want to see like your you know,
week or frail or blah blah blah. Heaven forbid. I
remember during the election when Hillary Clinton felt faint and
all the news reports were like, oh my godess so
she okay, she's old and frail and sick and she
can't be president. And it's like, no, she went to
work with the flu, as many women do, Like that's

(14:32):
what we do. Yeah, I agree. It kind of reminds
me of when we did the Women in Pain episode
and you made that joke about the woman in the
emergency room with the harpoon and just says, it's fine,
I don't want to be a bother get to me whenever.
I'll just be here. Don't worry about it. It's true,
and we actually have some numbers behind that to back

(14:55):
that up. But first, one last quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsor.
So our Durn's right. It is what ladies do, and
we're doing it more and more in the US where

(15:15):
we are lagging way behind when it comes to maternity
leave since this Bureau data collected between two thousand and
six to two thousand and eight showed that sixty six
percent of mothers giving birth to their first child worked
through their first pregnancy. If you look at data from
the sixties, about sixty five percent of pregnant women took
off of work a month before birth. These days, that

(15:36):
percent is at eighteen while eighty two percent of women
work until within a month of due date. Women are
also going back to work more quickly after giving birth. Yeah,
this will probably surprise no one. According to a Pew
Research Center survey, they found that when compared to fathers,
mothers were far more likely to face a workplace interruption

(15:57):
like reduced work hours. So we're basically working more but
also being punished for more, right, and no surprise. Pregnancy
discrimination is still a big thing in the US, and
women who are pregnant or might become pregnant faced emotions mispromotions,
are even possibly getting fired. Discharge makes up one third

(16:17):
of complaints as of twenty ten and twenty fifteen. The
US Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions, the EOC, and Fair Employment
Agencies at the state level had filed almost thirty one
thousand cases of pregnancy discrimination. This despite the nineteen seventy
eight Pregnancy Discrimination Act making it illegal to deny women
job opportunities or promotions because she is or might become pregnant.

(16:41):
Across all industries, races, and ethnicities, women report pregnancy discrimination,
but Black women are hit the hardest. It didn't surprise
me at all. I've actually worked in places where there
would be if if there was even a room or
that someone was pregnant, it would there like a hush
would fall over the office. And you know, people if
if you were wearing baggy clothes like like it was

(17:03):
almost like people were afraid that people would even just
think not even if you were, they would just suspect
that you were pregnant. Wow. I had an office once
where these people used to play. Some of my coworkers
used to play a game called Fat, Fashionable, or Pregnant,

(17:23):
and they would try to, like based on your clothes,
ascertain if you were just if your baggy clothes was
a fashion thing or because you're fat, or because you're pregnant,
which sounds like a really classy game. Yeah, very very classy. Indeed,
a report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission the

(17:44):
e HRC from twenty fifteen found that in Britain, fifty
four thousand new mothers are losing their jobs annually, and
that the number is up from a decade earlier. Another
distressing stat is that ten percent of pregnant women reported
being discouraged by their employer from getting checkups for both
mother and child after birth, and seven percent reported a

(18:06):
pressure to quit. Wow, that is so messed up, like
basically pressuring you to put your baby, your unborn child's
life at risk by foregoing checkups. Yeah, and you know
now that you've had a kid, just we don't need
you here anymore. Just quit, let's leave. That's terrible, what
a terrible work environment. Pregnant women have reported working harder,

(18:28):
as we touched on earlier, to avoid the stereotype of
being distracted and unable to concentrate. So clearly we have
a lot of work to do to change this. Yeah,
we got to catch up. This is unacceptable. It is
and we would love to hear from listeners around the
world about what the situation is in your nick of
the woods. And speaking of listeners, it's time for listener

(18:50):
mail Sophia wrote, I just wanted to say something about
Anne Rice's hypocrisy regarding fan fiction. In spite of making
an active effort to ruin people's lives for writing about
her characters, including having her lawyer's attempt to destroy unrelated
small businesses owned by fanfic writers, she actually came out
in full throated support for Fifty Shades of Gray and E. L. James.

(19:14):
Apparently only her own intellectual property is to be protected.
Anne Rice wrote a series of Sleeping Beauty erotic novels
under the pseudonym A. N. Rocular. Three of the books
were written in the early eighties, and a fourth was
released in twenty fifteen. In the series, Beauty wakes up
to the Prince raping her and is taken to his
kingdom as a sex slave. Problematic but non con non

(19:37):
consensual and dub con dubious consent fantasies can be explored
safely through erotica and fan fiction if that's what people
are interested in. The framing device of Rice's work pretty
clearly establishes that the content is not how healthy BDSM
relationships are conducted in a way that Fifty Shades emphatically
does not take that kind of care. There was a
fair bit of controversy involving Rice shooting down any DISCUSSI

(20:00):
on her Facebook page that was remotely negative about fifty
Shades and blocking a lot of people for expressing their
concern that the series romanticizes abuse by not establishing that
stocking and rape are not cool things for your boyfriend
to do. I did have a thought in regards to
the culture that's around slash fiction that you may not
have been aware to cover. It's a negative aspect of

(20:20):
the fandom which I hope will continue to disappear. There is,
unfortunately a great deal of internalized misogyny among creators of
transformative fiction. In some cases, it's the part of the
fick where the canon girlfriend is reduced to an out
of character shrew who must be swiftly removed without the
male characters looking bad for leaving cheating. It's the sort
of thing I hope has fallen out of fashion, but

(20:41):
it was one of the things that turned me off
fan fiction a while back. There's so much value in
these creative spaces, which are predominantly built and driven by
women and girls, or, in the case of the world
I'm currently working on women and a smattering of men
and non binary individuals. I think my main reason for
bringing up the internalized misogyny, which can be tied to
fetishizing MLM relationships but not always that can crop up,

(21:03):
is actually so that people who might have encountered things
like that can keep looking for something that speaks to them,
even if they're initially confronted with negativity. I have made
close lasting friendships with people I have RPID with, role
played with, and the right groups can become vital support networks.
And I could definitely go on about the pros and
cons of this sort of collaborative fiction, but I'm already

(21:24):
writing far more than I meant to. She also mentioned
in regards to our Action Figure episode and the whole
switch up of the Ironman three plots so that there'd
be a male villain action figure instead of a female
villain action figure. They never even made the action figure,
so it was pointless. It was all pointless, you know.
I gotta say, I am kind of here for this

(21:45):
and Rice dragging, Like, who knew An Rice was this
much of a not so nice person. I think an
Rice is going to come for us. Yeah, are we
are we start? This? Is this the beginning of a
new podcast? Few? Dude? Does she have a podcast? I
don't know. Anne Rice, if you're listening, come on our podcast,
you coward. Oh man, I'm gonna have nightmares to night.

(22:09):
An Rice is at my door. I did want to
mention this because the internalized aslogyny she's talking about, that's
something I have seen as well, and I was always
kind of confused by when I was younger, like, why
is it that Jenny from Harry Potter is suddenly just
a horrible human person that is so one dimensional? And
this makes a lot of sense to me, So I

(22:30):
did want to did want to include that in there,
that it is unfortunate but a lot of times the
girlfriend is reduced to just a shrill shrew that you
need to get rid of very quickly. Oh I hate that. Yeah.
And the one time I wrote Harry Potter fan fiction,
like the only negative things I ever got was like,

(22:52):
ken you please, like why are you even including this character?
Get rid of her? I hate her? So hopefully it
is moving away from that, and certainly there's so much
more out there. So if you have been turned up
by that, keep looking, keep looking. It's out there for you.
Our next letter comes from Kursten. Kirsten writes, I identify
as bisexual because that was the first word I heard

(23:14):
us that made sense for my identity. As many young
people do, I started learning about sexuality via Tumbler and
other online forums. I grew up in the rural Midwest
and had an incredibly limited queer representation. But I saw
the word bisexual online with its definition of attracted to
people of multiple genders. I was like, oh, yes, that
makes sense. At seventeen, I was searching for a bisexual

(23:34):
podcasts and came across the Sminty episode, and it made
me feel so seen. I didn't hear the word pan
sexual until much later. I'm twenty one now and my
first ever relationship, and my significant other identifies as non binary.
We've never talked about the ins and outs of the
way I identify, but I know that they don't think
about my identity excludes their gender in any way. When
I started dating my significant other, I debated using pan

(23:57):
sexual more interchangeably with my bisexuality, but I still prefer
my by label. I'm attracted to people of all genders,
but the way I'm attracted to my partner is different
from my crushes on boys, and those are different from
my crushes on girls. They're all equal and all important
to my identity. But I like the way people perform
their gender. It just doesn't matter what gender it happens
to be. It's been so great to see more by

(24:19):
and PAN representation, and I'm so glad you guys talked
about it. It will help teenagers and grown adults in
the by PAN spectrum feel seen and have even more
room to understand their own identity. I'm with you, Bridget.
Every time I think about Janelle Money and Dirty Computer,
my queer heart beats a little faster. This is such
a nice letter. I'm so happy that folks out there are,
you know, exploring their sexualities and exploring you know, what

(24:41):
it means for them, trying things on, deciding you know, hey,
I want to keep this label, even though this label
also seems to fit me. You know, I think that
we should all be a little bit more you know,
open and in fluid about about these things and really
find the label or labels. Let speak to us and
Janelle Money, how great is she? She's pretty great. I'm

(25:03):
glad that all of that's happening as well, and I'm
glad that we're having these conversations more often and more
out in the open, because I can tell you I
never really heard about pan sexuality or bisexuality when I
was younger, and I would have really appreciated having more
available to me to learn about it. Definitely thanks to

(25:26):
both of them for writing in. If you would like
to write to us, we would love to hear from you.
Our email is mom Stuff at HowStuffWorks dot com. You
can also find us on the social media is We
are on Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You and
on Twitter mom Stuff Podcast, and thanks as always to
our producer, Kathleen Quilliad