the dutch prime minister and his fiancé are having a baby. a tv presenter says he's too busy. ma'am.

Photo: Martijn Beekman, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

"Someone very special is on the way. See you in 2027, little one."

That was Nicolás Keenan on Instagram on Monday, per NL Times, in Dutch, Spanish and English, because when your fiancé is the prime minister of the Netherlands and you are an Argentine field hockey player, the baby announcement needs subtitles. Keenan and Rob Jetten are expecting their first child in the spring of 2027.

Jetten's party, D66, put out a press release the same afternoon, and it answers most of the questions before anyone could ask them. The surrogate is Dutch. So is the egg donor. Both are friends of the couple, and "there is no commercial surrogacy involved."

"We are incredibly grateful that, thanks to two wonderful women, we now have the opportunity to make our dream come true," Jetten said in the release.

The surrogate, Lisa, got her own paragraph. "I grew up in a warm and loving environment and now have a wonderful family of my own," she said. "With the unconditional support of our loved ones, surrogacy feels like a very special way to help make the dream of our dear friends come true." Lisa, you are a saint, and we will not be asking any further questions.

a prime minister with a due date

Jetten became the country's youngest ever prime minister in February and is its first openly gay one. NL Times reports he is also the first postwar Dutch prime minister to have a child while in office, and VRT NWS notes he is the first premier to have a child through a surrogate. NOS says he plans to take a few days of leave around the birth. The couple have been engaged since 2024 and have not said when they will marry. Keenan, a two-time Olympian, finished seventh with Argentina in Tokyo and eighth in Paris, A24 reports.

If the name rings a bell, Jetten is also the man who came to New York for the UN in September and spent an evening with a beer at Stonewall.

who had a problem with it

Surrogacy is barely regulated in Dutch law, and the politics are awkward. NOS points out that Jetten governs with the support of small Christian parties that want nothing to do with surrogacy, and Nederlands Dagblad reports that the lower house is due to debate a surrogacy bill before the end of the year, with one of those parties tying its support for the cabinet to it. Dutch Twitter spent Monday arguing about whether the couple were "buying" a baby, a claim the D66 release flatly contradicts.

And then there was the red carpet. At the premiere of Cats, presenter Catherine Keyl told the entertainment show Shownieuws, as Vandaag Inside reported, that she thinks you have no time to have a child when you are prime minister. "But then, who am I?" she added, in our translation. A fair question.

The other famous people at the same premiere answered it for her. Presenter Anita Witzier called Keyl's view "incredible nonsense" and said that not showing it could be done would set a very bad example. Actress Lone van Roosendaal pointed out that this is what women hear about pregnancy at work, and told Keyl, in words we will translate politely, to get lost.

The baby is due in the spring. We suspect the country will survive the prime minister taking a few days off.