"There simply isn't enough time to be a mother a wife and a politician at the same time. My husband and children have to take a back seat."

Brundtland is quite unusual in that she succeeded in combining politics and power with a family: she has had four children. She was only able to do this because her husband took on much of the childcare and was very supportive. She feels that she has made a sacrifice to some extent but that it is only fair for parents to share the responsibility for children:

 "Well I do feel I made a sacrifice for my own sake because you do miss some of the points that you would have had if you had been home every day. Being a woman leader and having those kind of positions that I've had was not easy to combine with being the mother of 4 children. And without having a husband that from the beginning expressed that he was willing to take on a much bigger part of that total parent responsibility in the home, I could not have done it. But as I told him at that time, I had taken on a bigger part than he had in the first 13 years of our family life and he agreed so he took on a bigger role as a father than many other fathers did at that time."