Annabel Crabb - Men at Work: Australias Parenthood Trap: Quarterly Essay 75

In June 2018, a child was born. It seemed from what I could tell, allowing for the array of crocheted blankets in which it was swaddled a very sweet but otherwise unremarkable infant. Two button eyes, a nose, probably bipedal, and so on. And yet this was one of the most celebrated and controversial children the Southern Hemisphere has encountered this decade.

Why? Because her mother is the serving prime minister of New Zealand.

Baby Neves mother, Jacinda Ardern, was hammered during the September 2017 election campaign with questions on her specific intentions vis--vis the biological equipment with which she at birth had been endowed and which in her thirty-seven years she had yet to engage fully in pursuit of her biological destiny. And when she finally announced her pregnancy well. All bets were off. In Australia, she became the most remarkable New Zealander since Russell Crowe, or Phar Lap. No matter that Ms Ardern was not even the only New Zealandborn political leader to make a baby that year (the Australian deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, having unexpectedly shared line honours in that respect). As the New Zealand prime ministerial ankles swelled, so did the column inches of advice, congratulation and condemnation extended to this woman on a mission which as readers were tirelessly reminded no woman had attempted since Benazir Bhutto. (And look what happened to her.) From Angela Shanahan, at The Australian:

There are the simple practical issues: the three- to four-hourly feeds for which, being a greenie leftie, she will try to do using her own milk; the sleepless nights, which reduce many women to a zombielike state; and the blithe confidence that after six weeks her partner will take over as full-time caregiver. Well, good luck with that one, too, because the father is not the mother and there is such a thing as maternal bonding, which is a basic post-partum physical need for mothers and infants. This woman needs at least six months off, not six weeks.

On both sides of the Tasman, the logistics of Arderns post-partum schedule were a question on which everyone, it seemed, had an urgent opinion.

A little over a year later, the Liberal Party of Australia in one of its increasingly customary leadership coups tipped out the serving prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and his deputy, Julie Bishop, and replaced them with Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg. Morrison and Frydenberg were something of an ecclesiastical first. The nation had never had a Pentecostal prime minister before, let alone one serving with a Jewish deputy and treasurer. Morrison immediately made the crippling national drought his primary concern, advocating prayer for rain; two days after his elevation, Bourke Airport recorded its highest single-day rainfall on record, suggesting that in Bourke at least the Almighty may have had an ear pricked. But there was something else unusual about the pair. Not since the mid-1970s, when Malcolm Fraser appointed a young John Howard to be his treasurer, had these two positions been held by the fathers of young children. Morrisons daughters, Abbey and Lily, were both at primary school. Frydenbergs kids were even younger: Gemma a preschooler, Blake a toddler.

One can only imagine the sustained national heart attack that would have accompanied the appointment of two mothers of young children to these demanding jobs. And we do need to rely on our imaginations, as no woman with children of any age has ever served as prime minister, or treasurer, or indeed as deputy leader of the Liberal or Labor parties in government. However, the first joint press conference given by the two men came and went without anyone raising the question that almost certainly would have been the first asked at an all-mothers affair: How are you going to manage it all?

Now, this essay isnt going to be a lengthy whine about how life is tough for Jacinda Ardern and easy for Scott Morrison. Id never argue that. But parliament is in many respects a brightly lit model village of our national sentiment. Its an absolutely intriguing demonstration of what we expect from fathers that the question of workfamily balance for a parent with the biggest job in the country doesnt even come up. For three weeks, Morrison and Frydenberg were interviewed about everything from faith to football to their favourite songs. I tweeted my observation about both of them having young families and was immediately accused by some anonymous snarler of trying to humanise them. Right, I thought. I can hardly complain about nobody asking them how they are going to manage things if I cant be bothered to do it myself. So I called them both.

And the first thing that became obvious was how unaccustomed each of these men was to considering this question. Working mothers of any public profile or professional seniority are asked how they manage it all with such lavish regularity that their answer is like a little psalm they know by heart. Heres mine: Well. Mondays Jeremy works half a day from home, so thats my day of working like a normal person. Thursday and Friday the kids are at after-school care, Tuesday and Wednesday are a crapshoot; sometimes Ill come home from work for school pick-up and go back to work after theyre in bed, or hit up the favour bank, which in my neighbourhood of school parents is a busy institution of daily withdrawals and deposits. (Ill pick your kid up from piano on Tuesday if youll take mine to gymnastics Wednesday. Ive got a vat of bolognese sauce to feed ten kids if youll look after mine for a few hours from three.) I do most of the cooking; Jem does grocery shopping, laundry and school forms. Some days it all works smoothly. Some days its a debacle.