Ivanka Trump says it's not her job to undermine the agenda that got her father elected. "It's to embrace the areas where there's commonality."
Although Ivanka Trump's revelation that she suffered postpartum depression following all three of her otherwise easy pregnancies was the big headline from her appearance on Thursday's episode of The Dr. Oz show, that wasn't the only noteworthy part.
The president's 35-year-old daughter and senior advisor pushed back at the notion that she has a duty to the nation to be a voice of moderation in her father's White House.
Trump says she's candid with her father and his aides, but realizes the American people voted her father into the Oval Office based on his agenda, not hers.
"It's not my job to undermine that agenda," she explained. "It's to embrace the areas where there's commonality ... If you're part of a team and you have a seat at the table and a forum from which to air your perspective and opinion, I don't need to couple that with a denouncement on every single issue I disagree with."
She told Oz that growing up in a "very noisy" family taught her to speak up.
"A Trump family Thanksgiving is a competition for who can speak the loudest," she joked. "We've all learned to elbow our way in here and make sure our voices are heard."
One area where she's vowed to do that is paid family leave. The United States is the only industrialized nation that doesn't require employers to offer it and, according to Oz and affirmed by Politifact, that has a long-term negative impact on working families' financial and emotional health.
Trump admitted that even with her plentiful financial resources, she struggled when she returned to work after the birth of her three children. It's this discussion with Oz that led to her postpartum depression revelation.
"I was trying to figure out how I would get back into a rhythm where I felt like I was being the mother I desired to be while continuing to engage in my professional endeavors that were important to me," she told Oz. "With each of my three children, I had some level of postpartum depression."
In hindsight, Ivanka wishes she hadn't been quite such a hard-charging executive when it came time to decide when to go back to work full-time.
It was a lesson which took her two more kids to learn, said Ivanka, noting that by the time she had her third child (son Theodore James Kushner, born in March 2016), she anticipated the depression and went easier on herself.
"Part of the challenge for me is that I did have the flexibility and I didn't fully take it," she admitted. "I believed that I had to get back (to work) earlier and I put the pressure on myself ... I re-engaged too quickly and my body responded and reacted accordingly."."
Trump did not elaborate on what her medical treatment involved and whether she received medication or counseling, all parts of the taboo associated with postpartum depression.
She did, however, put on gloves and manhandle an actual human brain as Oz discussed the physical ramifications of not giving families enough time together.
"The thought that we would take this beautiful and sacred organ and abuse it by not letting women — or men — spend time with their babies and not providing some of the financial support to get kids the educational benefits they need," he lamented. "One million new neural connections every second when they're growing like that. When there's no parent there, it hurts a kid's architecture, which hurts learning and behavior, which hurts them in school."
Pointing to the frontal cortex of the brain (responsible for executive function) in Trump's hands, he added "It also hurts the moms. It hurts their brains."
Trump concurred, noting, "As any parent anecdotally knows, there's explosive growth that happens between years zero and one and from zero to five ... As a country, we spend a lot of time thinking about how to remediate a child in eighth grade who doesn't have adequate reading or math skills and we spend so little time thinking about how we invest in that child in those earliest years to ensure that they're at the right place when they enter school."
That starts with expanding the child tax credit, she said. "A lot of people are unable to afford child care, so they have to go back to work and they're putting their children in less-than-desirable environments where they aren't being stimulated or being properly cared for. So we're really not investing in American families."
There were moments of levity, including her answer about whether she's ever wanted to ground her father from using Twitter.
"Yes, I do!" she said before erupting into laughter. "We definitely have had those conversations. But he is authentic. He is who he is."