As the arguments raged, defending or lacerating UK chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves’s tears in the House of Commons, an image of another tearful woman came to mind. It was a newspaper photograph taken nearly 30 years ago outside the gates of a Dunblane primary school in Scotland where 16 five-year-olds and their teacher were shot dead hours earlier and it was captioned, “a grieving parent”. The indisputably tearful woman in the black coat was not a tragic Dunblane parent. It was me.
As a journalist, it was mortifying. Reporters are supposed to remain impassive. But as a mother of small children and a human being in that moment tears seemed by far the sanest response.
So who decides what is normal or rational? With due respect to the (mostly) women rushing to declare they never cried in public and would have stayed away if unable to compose themselves, their facial expressions were never important enough to move the bond markets. Whether “something” had happened at home and/or she felt terminally frustrated by her boss’s latest U-turn, Reeves had no choice but to show up in the Commons. If she hadn’t, the speculation and the bond movements would have been even more demented.
So, went the narrative, it was Reeves the crybaby versus the cold judgment of the markets. Yet such is the emotional volatility of the markets, there is a Fear and Greed index to gauge their mood swings. It was only when it was clear that Reeves was remaining in her job that they composed themselves. The point often missed was that pre-tears Reeves had already earned her reputation as a serious-minded chancellor. It clearly wasn’t she who had executed the U-turns. So why would a few perfectly rational tears cause such discomfort?
Breaking down in tears at the scene was mortifying. It was also the only sane response
Kneecap owes Keir Starmer, the BBC and Helen from Wales a thank you
Should influencers and politicians share photographs of their children online?
So far nobody wants the Presidency and its quarter-of-a-million euro salary. Why?
Crying in public was once seen as a strength. It wasn’t until the mid-20th century that tears were used to suggest that “candidates for public office were not manly or stable enough” to be there, according to Tom Lutz, author of a history of tears. Which might explain why little boys and girls cry equally when they’re young, and why men tend to cry less than women as adults – and far less than women at work.
[ Fears for tears: why do we tell boys not to cry?Opens in new window ]
Research suggests women cry five times as often as men and on average about five times a month. Women’s tear ducts are also shallower, which causes spillover and makes their crying more obvious unfortunately.
But men cry too. Winston Churchill cried copiously in mourning and celebration. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden all mopped their tears as presidents. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has cried publicly dozens of times. Vladimir Putin also appeared to cry at a 2013 concert during a band’s performance of You Know, I Really Want to Live.
[ From the archive: No crying please, we’re IrishOpens in new window ]
Iron women cried. Margaret Thatcher had tears rolling down her face on at least four separate occasions. Hillary Clinton choked up in a coffee shop during the 2008 New Hampshire Democratic primary. Jacinda Ardern teared up in her final interview as New Zealand prime minister when asked how she felt about her portrait in parliament. “One day, I will be finished and the only thing that will remain is that picture and how I made people feel,” she said, sounding perfectly rational and real.
The fact is that reaction to a public crying episode depends largely on what judgment people have already formed of the person doing the crying.
Anyone who interpreted Reeves’s tears as a signal of female helplessness lacks basic understanding of how the sexes react to persistent undermining, provocation or incompetence. Generally speaking, men act out in anger, possibly with a profanity or a punch or getting smashed down the pub; women internalise it and weep with frustration privately, mostly in an effort not to let the side down. And it was that side, interestingly, that tended to show its anti-Reeves teeth last week. Reeves was facing the cameras after a year of titanic efforts to balance the books of the world’s sixth largest economy, only to be isolated and betrayed at the last minute by her own side – and in the full public glare. Not many people, however senior in their jobs, can intuit what that actually feels like.
Way back in 1987 former US congresswoman Patricia Schroeder famously broke into tears while giving up her presidential bid. She was still getting hate mail about her “breakdown” decades later, she told The New York Times. “People used to say ‘We don’t want somebody’s finger on the nuclear button who cries.’ I would say ‘Well, I don’t want somebody with their finger on it who doesn’t’.”
Her point is even more relevant now, in the age of blind certainty, retribution and performative cruelty. “When I see a man cry I view it as a weakness … The last time I cried was when I was a baby,” Donald Trump told People magazine in 2015. Westminster opposition leader Kemi Badenoch, a fiercely articulate woman with a front-row view of Reeves’s distress, chose to respond with malevolent gloating. If a politician lacks all compassion, empathy and decency towards their political peers, how can they be trusted to represent ordinary people?
Ordinary voters get it. Six in 10 said seeing a politician cry would make no difference to their opinion of them, and 12 per cent said it would even improve it, according to a Sunday Times poll. Just 17 per cent of voters said seeing a politician cry would make them think less of them.
The state of the world calls for more weeping, not less. That would be the sane choice.
