Mum’s Busy Work review: How Dame Jacinda Ardern’s book portrays modern parenting

Dame Jacinda Ardern’s children’s book Mum’s Busy Work comes out today. Does it resonate with the everyday Kiwi working mum? Jennifer Simandl, who works in an executive-level management role for a building repair and restoration company in Auckland and is a mum of two young children, shares her thoughts on the book.

In Mum’s Busy Work, the mum says sometimes she doesn’t feel like going to work. I really related to that part.

As a working mum, it’s a wrench to know that your kid is going to go to daycare or to school and away from you. Especially when they’re saying they’d rather stay with you.

That’s a hard one to get past. I used to leave daycare in tears when I did the drop-off. It’s super hard.

We talked about this before having kids, and I always maintained that I wanted to be a working mum. I am not someone who can sit at home and sing nursery rhymes every day of the week.

I need to be engaged with adults. My job is really fun and interesting for me and something I’ve worked hard to get to as well.

Dame Jacinda Ardern and her children's book Mum's Busy Work. Photos / Penguin, Getty Images

But raising children while working fulltime is so much harder than you can imagine. Just the constancy of needing to do everything for two small people because they can’t do things for themselves, as well as you – and then trying to find time to be your own person still.

At the same time, it’s so worth it to have children.

No matter what type of mum you are, you feel pressure. Mother-in-laws are very good at that pressure.

I’ve seen with some friends where their mothers-in-law have not worked and they think that their daughters-in-law should be stay-at-home mums. That’s not a reality.

So you can’t win as a woman. You can do everything right, and someone will still judge you. You just have to do what’s best for you and your family. You have to find women around you who will build you up.

I was raised by very strong women. And I have an amazing group of friends who come from all “work lives”. Some of them work, some of them don’t. Most are part-time mums.

Jennifer Simandl reads Dame Jacinda Arden's new children's book to her kids, Mason, 7, and Katie, 4.

Everyone celebrates each other and the wins that we have. If we’re having a hard time, we look after each other. I think that’s what you need. You need your village. And it makes a huge difference to have a super helpful and supportive husband.

I liked that Mum’s Busy Work was written from the little girl’s perspective. I liked that her dad, like the dad in our family, does some of the chores.

In our house, my husband does a lot of the cooking. We have different work hours. He starts early and finishes early so he can do more of the afternoon time [with the kids]. It’s nice to see that balance in a modern book.

It felt quite authentic.

I asked my kids, “Does that sort of sound like us?” and they were like, “Hmm, no, kind of, I don’t know.” They never really thought about it because they’ve always just had me go to work, I guess.

My daughter was most interested in the chocolate. Then she wanted chocolate after reading the book.

I really liked the illustrations, and my little girl, especially, was picking things out in those. We like illustrations that have interesting things to look at.

There are probably not many books like Jacinda’s book. Most children’s books have the mum staying at home.

Think about the Spot books [by Eric Hill]. If you look at the Mother’s Day and the Father’s Day Spot books ... Father’s Day - they do all the fun stuff. They go to the park. They go to the beach.

Mum does the washing, mum looks after the kids, mum does the dinner. It’s that type of vibe. So mum’s doing all the housework on Mother’s Day. It’s ”mum cares for me, mum loves me”. Mum is the nurturing mum.

But in dad books, dad’s fun, dad takes us out.

Pages from Dame Jacinda Ardern's children's Mum's Busy Work, illustrated by Ruby Jones. Copyright / Penguin NZ

In books like Dear Zoo, I will often change the gender of things as I read them through because most books are predominantly male-gendered.

“He was too tall. He was too big.” In all those Dear books, a lot of them just use “he”, because I don’t know, someone decided a long time ago that more books probably would sell if they were he-based?

So I often mix the genders up. There should be an even mix. It’s something I’m very conscious of with reading books.

I like the end where, from the kid’s perspective, mummy’s there to dance and read and play with her. I think that’s the important thing for the child to feel.

My kids mainly teach me to slow down and enjoy the little moments. All they want to do is build something out of Lego or magnetic tiles together.

It was different to read, definitely. It was different to the other stories that we have.

As told to Varsha Anjali

Varsha Anjali is a journalist in the lifestyle team at the Herald. Based in Auckland, she covers culture, travel and more.