Jacinda is Asked the Question of Our Time

Dieuwe de Boer
Opinion

Eight hours after becoming Leader of the Labour Party, Leader of the Opposition, and possibly future Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern was asked the question of our time: are you planning on having children and would that affect your performance?

You don't even have to imagine the outrage. She protested. Feminists everywhere protested. "It's the current year" they screamed. "This is sexism and misogyny. It's an illegitimate question." Having children should be a personal decision. It's none of your business they say. Yet, months previously, Miss Ardern raised this issue herself. She wasn't interested in the top job because she wanted to have babies.

The baby question is an important question to ask, regardless of the aspiring PM's gender. Bill English has six children. Winston Peters has a son and daughter. Peter Dunne has two sons. But the more liberal leaders? Jacinda Ardern, David Seymour, and Metiria Turei have a single bastard child between them.

Why does it matter you might ask? The obvious answer is that a prime minister with very young children is going to have to choose between neglecting the country or their baby. But that's obvious reason that anyone but some very thick leftists or your average journalist would have thought of already; there is something more important about the problem of a leader who has no children.

Those who have children have a stake in the future. These members of parliament are not producing future taxpayers to pay for their healthcare and superannuation, and they're doing it by choice. The rest of us, and our children, are going to be on the hook for the bill. And there simply aren't enough of us.

New Zealand's birth rate is 1.99. It's been trending down from 4 in 1960. It would be even lower if not for the Maori and Pacific Islanders bring up the average with 2.5 and 2.7 respectively. It's not just about the number of births either, nearly half are now out of wedlock, for Maori it's nearly 80%, but that's a story for another time.

Meanwhile over in Europe the birth rate is 1.58 children per woman. Only France and Ireland come within 0.1 NZ. No country in Europe meets the replacement rate of 2.1 children. Germany is at 1.47 and Greece is at 1.3 births. Not one of Europe's G7 leaders have children. Two-thirds of European prime ministers and presidents are childless. These are childless nations with childless leaders. Yet these countries have growing populations thanks to replacement via mass immigration.

Every single one of our childless liberal leaders wants to import more immigrants to be the children they don't have. Perhaps these parties should remove their gender quotas, official or otherwise, and replace them with some offspring quotas.

About the author

Dieuwe de Boer

Editor of Right Minds NZ, columnist at The BFD, and Secretary General for the New Conservatives. Follow me on Telegram and Twitter. In addition to writing about conservative politics and reactionary thought, I like books, gardening, biking, tech, reformed theology, beauty, and tradition.