![\"Then](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/then-prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-with-neve-at-waitangi-202-7SNPSUKKY5BTPG5J4YNQG2NRTA.jpg\")
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Then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern with Neve at Waitangi, 2021. (Source: Getty)<\/p>\n
But the metaphor isn\u2019t laboured in these 32 pages. It\u2019s a book about emotions rather than events, dancing through the days of the working week that dictate Neve\u2019s lifeworld.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst bloke\u201d Clarke Gayford is there, doing the washing and being present when Neve wakes up on Tuesday and mum is already at work. All three go out for a Saturday picnic. Mum arrives home early on Friday to play hide-and-seek.<\/p>\n
![\"Newlyweds](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/newlyweds-dame-jacinda-ardern-and-clarke-gayford-walk-throug-K23P7SQNM5EGJO7E5X7YOEAT6I.jpg\")
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Newlyweds Dame Jacinda Ardern and Clarke Gayford in January 2024. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
In fact, positive mentions of work are thin on the page. On Monday, mum tells Neve she doesn\u2019t always like going to work; Neve thinks, \u201cShe looked really tired when she got home.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is a welcome chocolate treasure hunt in the prime minister\u2019s office when Neve visits. While mum works at home on Sunday, Neve asks what her job is. Mum replies, \u201cLooking after everyone, like you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The book ends with Monday rolling round again and Neve going from stomping her feet at the thought of daycare to dancing with mum in her \u201cclippy-cloppy\u201d work shoes. For Neve, this is mum\u2019s real job: spending time with her, dancing, reading, playing and loving.<\/p>\n
Work on her own terms<\/p>\n
The pages are cleverly illustrated by Ruby Jones, best known for her TIME magazine cover after the 2019 terror attack in Christchurch. Her signature spare, colourful style captures Neve\u2019s perspective and mood, from separation anxiety to love and joy.<\/p>\n
Of course, Neve didn\u2019t write the book. But, as Ardern notes at its end: “This book is based on the words and lessons taught to me by my daughter [\u2026] while I was the prime minister of New Zealand. May every child know that no matter what, they are our life\u2019s greatest work.”<\/p>\n
![\"Clarke](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/clarke-gayford-holding-the-baby-while-jacinda-ardern-deliver-KKNJLZ4MB5E7ZMTK6OSDWWCBPQ.jpg\")
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Clarke Gayford holding the baby while Jacinda Ardern delivers a speech at the United Nations headquarters in New York, in 2018. (Source: Getty)<\/p>\n
There is an echo of C S Lewis in this, who said, \u201cChildren are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also a hint of conservatism in Ardern\u2019s insistence on labelling herself a \u201cmum\u201d as well as a professional politician. According to the blurb of her recent memoir, A Different Kind of Power, she also \u201cconsiders her greatest roles to be those she will hold for life \u2013 being a mum and proud New Zealander\u201d.<\/p>\n
But this isn\u2019t really a retreat. Ardern is subverting the issue of women and work on her own terms. She\u2019s working through her experience of being \u201ca working mother who juggled mum guilt\u201d to open up a conversation and find a better way.<\/p>\n
In the memoir, Ardern writes of her fear that the guilt she felt about being absent after Neve was born would have been reinforced by \u201cguilt-inducing words\u201d from her daughter. “It hadn\u2019t been. What I felt \u2013 that constant ache that I should be with her more \u2013 had been created by me, all on my own. But tonight, Neve finally asked me the question I\u2019d known would come eventually: ‘Mummy, why do you have to work so much?'”<\/p>\n
![\"Dame](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/jacinde-ardern-C3CHYKMX3VGP5N5HWIIEETWQDE.jpg\")
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Dame Jacinda Ardern’s memoir was published earlier this year. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
Having a working mum is OK<\/p>\n
We have to remember that Ardern had only just learned she was pregnant when she became prime minister \u2013 at 37, New Zealand\u2019s youngest in 150 years.<\/p>\n
She was entering new leadership territory on the national and international stage, and was only the second world leader to give birth while in office (after Pakistan\u2019s Benazir Bhutto 30 years earlier).<\/p>\n
![\"Jacinda](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/jacinda-ardern-and-partner-clarke-gayford-on-election-night-Y6OKO63MINDE3NPI4RT4W5QS5I.jpg\")
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Jacinda Ardern and partner Clarke Gayford on election night, September 2017, just weeks before she learned she was pregnant. (Source: Getty)<\/p>\n
As women in paid work often do, she largely left the backdrop of juggling new motherhood with her public role out of the picture. Neve was kept out of the spotlight and Ardern separated her job from her family\u2019s private lives.<\/p>\n
When she took Gayford and baby Neve to the UN in 2018, it was maybe a signal of things to come. Now, with a memoir, this book and a documentary about her time in power just released, she is challenging that separation.<\/p>\n
Feminist scholars call it an \u201candrocentric\u201d view of work, where women entering traditional workplaces have to conform to restrictive and dominant masculine culture, rather than being able to craft new selves.<\/p>\n
Mum\u2019s Busy Work responds to that in two ways. On the one hand, it is clearly positioned as an \u201cinspiring and heartwarming\u201d story about the relationship between a working mum and her daughter.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/jacinda-ardern-childrens-book-D2H5OBUI6BGHJAYJCV3IWZHJTA.jpg\")
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The book, published by Penguin Random House, is out this week. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
On the other, it belongs to the genre of children\u2019s books that tackle the challenges of unconventional households, such as those with same-sex or sole parents, or those made up of blended families.<\/p>\n
This one is about \u201ccelebrating the relationship between working mums and their children\u201d. Message: even if your mum works and you go to daycare Monday to Friday and feel separated from her, you are still the most important thing to her.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a book that will be enjoyed and appreciated by working parents who\u2019ve been asked \u201cwhere is your child?\u201d and \u201care you still working?\u201d. And by children, who will hear that having a working mum is OK, being a working mum is OK \u2013 and missing mum is OK, too.<\/p>\n
Katie Pickles is a Professor of History at the University of Canterbury. <\/p>\n