Mothers In Action : Challenges Female Athletes FacePost Motherhood

Motherhood is that phase of life that is really challenging for all the women all their. It gets even more challenging for Female Athletes, whose career suddenly hit the brakes.

While in the recent era more and more sports players have come up and made their comeback into the sporting world- what really remains common among these formidable women are the challenges that they had to face post motherhood to break into the sports again

After bagging 23 grand slam titles, US tennis star Serena Williams is the undoubtedly greatest of all time. But, she didn’t fail to tell the world how difficult it was of her and her body to come back into this arena. Her words were echoed by many other Female Athletes and working moms who could relate to her intense struggle.

Read More : The Sports Woman Who Got Stronger After Motherhood

Being an athlete and a mother doesn’t seem to gel well, the demands of the sport make most women delay having children since for women it is extremely difficult to have children and then come back into the best form. While mothers like Williams, Mary Kom, Clijsters all have proved themselves as they came back in some of the best forms they have ever been post-pregnancies, but the journey certainly hasn’t even easy.

The main obstacle actually dates back to the outdated view that society holds- a woman after becoming a mother has to complete devote herself to the child. She cannot possibly think of having a stressful career at this time. The worst part- in most of the countries female athletes do not get maternity benefits. On top of that, it is seen to be the duty of the mother to take care of the child even though she has to go for training.

One athlete mother talked about how she has to wake up at 3 am, feed her child, and then go for training at that hour in a cold winter season since she has to come back and feed the child again.

In the last 100 years of Wimbledon only one mother, Australian Evonne Cawley (nee Goolagong) has won the tournament, demonstrating just how hard it is to come back after giving birth.

Here in New Zealand, the decision is not made easy because sports organisations have overlooked maternity benefits for their female athletes.

Another issue that crops up because of pregnancy is the selection. A woman has to take a break of over a year to get back on the field. In this one year, she loses her elite status and it is more often than not that she will be overlooked after she comes back post pregnancy. She will then have to prove herself to the selection committee and work twice as hard, and now with added responsibility than she had to before.

This controversy occurred when Serena Williams came back after giving birth. When she came back from her maternity leave, her ranking was dropped from number 1 to number 453. This made her face much tougher competition and she had to play many more rounds to qualify. This led her to acquire an injury which then forced her to withdraw from the French Open. Serena was extremely vocal about it and said it was completely unfair to treat a woman in this way, and that women should not be penalised for giving birth.

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Losing the elite athlete status which these women had worked hard on after embracing motherhood is also a challenging phenomenon. For these women their identity is the sports that they play- Mary Kom the boxer, Serena the tennis player- the maternity leave disrupts this identity making the women feel lost. In sports, the biggest asset for a player is the body. This goes through several changes during pregnancy. Top that with the pressure to qualify and come back is extremely immense.

It is often seen that these new mothers have a lot of fears- will they get back to the previous fitness level, can they top their game again, how will the post-baby body look.

On the bright side, one thing that does work for sporting mom is that giving birth increases the focus of the mother, which can help in training. But, if they train too hard post-birth, then the mother is really prone to injuries

Mothers who have a different career- other than sports- while it is still hard for her to get back, but it is still easier for her than for an elite sportsperson after giving birth. After Williams announced her pregnancy, many believed that this was the end of the athlete. The fact that she won 23 Grand Slams and also won the Australian Open accounted for nothing in a comeback. She was written off. Yet she came back after intensive labour which also mist killed her and left her bedridden for six weeks. She then paid tribute to all the mothers and said if she could do it then everyone can. Even after all this, her rankings were dropped, and she had to fight her way to come on top.

Most countries and sporting management don’t have proper maternity care or childcare subsidies for mothers when they are on the road with their teams. There are easy roads given for a mother who is making her comeback. There is no incentive, no special arrangements, on the contrary, it is made harder for them.

Balancing both motherhood and sports can be hard work. A great amount of time management and organisational skills are needed to actually make it work. Along with that, overwhelming support from one’s partner is also needed.

Both Serena and Mary Kom could pursue training because their partners took care of the children while they were away. They still had to make many sacrifices, but many women do not have the luxury of having such supportive partners.

Many Female Athletes still have to do some exceptional time management and then go for their training. The strain that it put these sports mothers into is too much. Returning to international competition just months or even weeks after giving birth feels yet more impressive in the context of the focus afforded to injury and recovery time in professional sports. Commentators agonise for hours over whether or not an injury holds the potential to impact an athlete’s performance. Usain Bolt’s hamstring was dissected with such scrutiny in the run-up to the Rio Olympics that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a more impressive feat to overcome than, say, carrying another human inside you for the best part of a year.

While many women have overcome these challenges, it is more important to eradicate these challenges rather than romanticising the struggles that women have to face because she wants to be both a mother and an athlete. She needs to be provided with the required care, contracts, security and incentive so that she can come back after pregnancy with ease.

Read More : How To Be The Perfect Sports Mom

Originally published at Sporcial.