A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir

A Different Kind of Power opens with an extraordinary collision of career and family life. Jacinda Ardern is sitting in a friend's bathroom waiting for a pregnancy test while coalition negotiations following New Zealand's 2017 election are still underway. Within days, she will learn whether she will become Prime Minister. Within minutes, she learns that she is pregnant.

That opening sets the tone for an important thread running through the memoir. Alongside the story of Ardern's political career and leadership, she describes pregnancy, becoming a first-time mother and figuring out how family life could operate around an unusually demanding public role.

Ardern became Prime Minister of New Zealand at 37 and, in 2018, became the first elected head of government in decades to give birth while in office. She took six weeks of maternity leave before returning to work, while her partner Clarke Gayford became the primary caregiver. Her story makes visible the practical reality behind a high-profile career: major professional responsibility does not remove the ordinary questions of childcare, partnership, time and family capacity.

You do not need to read the book primarily for its politics to find this part of the memoir compelling. At its core is a familiar working-parent dilemma in an unusually public setting: major career opportunities and major family milestones do not necessarily arrive in a convenient order.