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Kellyanne Conway Says Trump Officials Wouldn’t Want Their Wives Working in the White House

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Motherhood might keep Kellyanne Conway from taking a role at the White House.

During Politico’s Women Rule event this week, Conway, who managed President-Elect Donald Trump’s campaign, again demurred on whether she’d join the new presidential administration. Her reasoning? “My children are 12, 12, 8 and 7, which is bad idea, bad idea, bad idea, bad idea for mom going inside [the White House],” Conway said, according to Politico. “They have to come first, and those are very fraught ages.”

Conway said that Trump — who, in 2004, called pregnancy a wonderful thing for mothers and husbands but “an inconvenience” for business — has made it clear that working mothers are welcome in his administration. She said that a number of senior campaign officials have encouraged her to take on a role in the administration, saying something along the lines of: “I know you have four kids but …”

“I said there’s nothing that comes after the ‘but’ that makes any sense to me so don’t even try. Like what is the but? But they’ll eat Cheerios for the rest of the day? Nobody will brush their teeth again until I get home?” she said. “I do politely mention to them the question isn’t would you take the job, the male sitting across from me who’s going to take a big job in the White House. The question is would you want your wife to,” Conway said. “Would you want the mother of children to? You really see their entire visage change. It’s like, oh, no, they wouldn’t want their wife to take that job.”

But she didn’t entirely reject the idea that she’d be involved in Trump’s administration, and even suggested that she might want to position herself as a role model for working mothers.

“Maybe I could help America’s women in terms of feeling less guilty about balancing life and career and perhaps Skyping or Facetiming and showing how that’s done,” Conway said, according to ABC. “I mean there’s something to that. So we’ll figure all that out.”

[Politico]

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Write to Samantha Cooney at samantha.cooney@time.com