In an odd way for someone who’s an Iowa caucus winner and cabinet secretary, because he started so young, @PeteButtigieg has grown up and matured on public view. @merica captures what has been an increasingly important chunk of that for him: being a dad
— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) April 26, 2024
I’m sure it helps that Buttigieg is working for a man who was once a single dad raising two young children. Biden has talked about how he couldn’t have stayed in the Senate without a strong family network to support him… and reliable public (rail) transportation between Washington DC and his home in Delaware. Dan Merica, for Notus — “How Parenthood Changed Pete Buttigieg”:
… Lis Smith, who had been Pete’s top media adviser in 2020 and was there that evening, remembers thinking how striking it was to see “someone who would gaggle in Norwegian on the campaign trail or could recall entire poems and recite them to a reporter in the car … cry uncle during bath time.” Smith, who recently had a child of her own, told me, “There was sometimes a perception of Pete that he was Mr. Perfect and that everything did come a little too easily to him. So there is something new and different seeing him sort of struggle like the rest of us with the challenges of child-rearing.”
The Pete Buttigieg who called for backup was indeed a changed man — more willing to acknowledge he needed help, yes, but also differently disposed toward politics and power than the hyper-confident small-city mayor that America first got to know in 2019. According to Pete, his husband and a dozen people who have known him for years, parenthood has altered everything from the kind of future he wants for himself to the say-yes-to-every-invitation attitude that helped him climb to the top rungs of American politics. “I’m more attuned to all of the different ways you can have a good life, only some of which involve public life,” he told me recently over lunch near the Department of Transportation’s headquarters in Washington.
Chasten told me that people routinely ask him what is next for his husband — but that’s the wrong question. “There has been a significant change in Pete,” Chasten said, “where I feel like he has recognized that leadership is extremely important, but it’s not the only thing.” He continued, “Pete has always been a really gifted, skilled public servant who, therefore, should continue to be of service and should continue to think about what’s next. … But then our kids came along, and I think Pete very quickly realized how good it is being home and being a family, and being in Washington robs you of many opportunities to just be a family.”
Buttigieg is hardly the first Washington official to face a trade-off between public ambition and parenting. Women have for generations borne the brunt of this dilemma — memorably captured by former State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter in her viral 2012 essay, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” Now, Buttigieg is experiencing the dynamic first-hand. “I think work-life balance is still sometimes treated as though it were only a women’s issue,” he told me. “I think becoming a father helped me realize what was at stake for me personally in all of these debates about work-life balance, childcare and everything that goes along with it.”…
Gradual Dawn Open Thread: Pete Buttigieg, Working DadPost + Comments (74)