If you're a leader, you can't have a baby.

If you’re a leader, you have a choice. Being there for your kids, or being there for your job.

But you can’t have it both ways. Not now, not tomorrow.

That’s the message from writer, former political advisor and politician’s wife Cassandra Wilkinson who says she’s been there and seen just how impossible it is to balance everything and do it well.

Former New South Wales Premier Kristina Keneally and Cassandra’s old boss tweeted this last night:

“I suspect the sisterhood won’t like it, but Cass makes some excellent observations re leadership & parenting.”

Cassandra writes:

“Tasmanian Lara Giddings said recently being pregnant and giving birth while being a political leader was the last taboo. She characterised the achievement of such a milestone as the next frontier to follow electing women, electing mothers and women having children while in high office.

As a woman whose children had a politician for a father for eight years; as a woman who has many friends who are MPs with kids; and as a woman who worked for a political leader who was a mother, I hope nobody is in a rush to break this last barrier.

As a politician you may love your spouse and children as fiercely as any poet but you can’t cheat the nights. Parliament sits late, school parents and citizens associations meet, angry mobs expect an audience, ribbons need to be pinned and plaques dedicated.”

But it’s babies, she says, that are the real deal breaker.

She says not even Kristina Keneally, whose children were ‘well into their primary years’ could have managed the Herculean workload of being Premier if she’d had a newborn in her care.

“One afternoon I joined a group of younger colleagues discussing their enthusiasm for running for office. My suggestion they wait until after they had children was met with scorn; we can do it, look at her they said. I did look at her and always found something to admire. But I didn’t envy her even once as I walked out the door to do the school run, leaving the more ambitious to find reasons to be seen lingering into the night.”

What do you think, are there some jobs where ‘having it all’ is just an empty phrase?