Matt Dickinson: Serena Williams’ frustration speaks for all who juggle motherhood with careers

But there will also be millions of women who have never picked up a tennis racket who will have recognised many of the challenges, difficult choices and frustrations that Williams expressed in an interview in Vogue this week in which she talked about her imminent retirement to have more children.

She spoke enviably about Tom Brady still performing as an NFL quarterback at 45. “Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family,” she said. “I don’t think it’s fair. If I were a guy I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labour of expanding our family.”

Inevitably, there was no shortage of men rushing to tell one of the greatest athletes of all time that it was not really her choice to make – that she is a fading force without a grand-slam win in five years and should bow out without complaint, and certainly not gender discussion – but then they were never likely to want to understand the wider arguments about the struggles for women, in sport and far beyond, in trying to juggle motherhood and careers.

It is a universal story but sport can bring particular pressures for women in thinking about the timing to try for a baby to work it around major championships and events. According to Faith Kipyegon, who became only the third mum to defend an Olympic title when she won the 1,500m at Tokyo 2020, she spent years plotting pregnancy so she would miss a Commonwealth Games but not the World Championships.

But it is not just about when to take a break but the insecurities understandably felt by female athletes in stepping away. It was not long ago that Jessica Ennis-Hill warned that women feel under pressure not to have children during their sporting careers because they could lose sponsorship and other backing.

Ennis-Hill spoke out after Allyson Felix revealed her battles with Nike, which had wanted to pay her 70 per cent less after she gave birth and refused to provide other maternity assurances despite her status as one of the most decorated runners in history.

A chorus of female athletes revealed similar experiences. According to Ennis-Hill: “I think there is pressure on female athletes who feel like ‘I have to do my career and I can’t stop in the thick of my career and go away and have a child, and perhaps that is the end of it’.”

To be a successful sporting mum can be accomplished – we have been celebrating them since Fanny Blankers-Koen won four gold medals in track and field at the London Olympics of 1948 and, as a mother of two children who was also three-months pregnant, picked up the newspaper sobriquet “The Flying Housewife” – but I recall speaking to Kristin Armstrong at the London 2012 Olympics about all the conflicted feelings of guilt and fear as well as ambition, on top of daily complications of training, of returning to road cycling after starting a family.

Armstrong was holding a gold medal, as well as her son Lucas, so it at least proved worth the commitment. Remarkably, she came back out of retirement at Rio de Janeiro in 2012 and won again, becoming, at 42, the oldest individual US Olympic champion since 1968.

In tennis, Kim Clijsters lifted one grand-slam singles trophy before motherhood, then three after having her daughter Jada. Among British stars, Paula Radcliffe, Jo Pavey, Lizzie Deignan and Laura Kenny are among those whose triumphs have helped to tear down the notion that babies are career-ending or will lead to a decline in performance.

Pavey, at 39, ran a lifetime best in 10,000m at the London Olympics three years after the birth of her son Jacob and, two years later, raced to gold at the European Championships. I recall putting to her that various physiological studies suggested that mature years, and even motherhood, might confer certain advantages. “A year of total deconditioning with pregnancy, caesareans, all the trying to get back to fitness while breastfeeding? I am not sure about any benefits,” she responded.

Williams played while breastfeeding her daughter Olympia at tournaments. As she told Vogue, she also played through post-partum depression. The idea of continuing top-level tennis while trying for another baby was too much – “I need to be two feet into tennis or two feet out,” she said – and hardly a surprise given all she went through in giving birth first time.

She had her baby via caesarean section but developed such a terrible hacking cough that her stitches burst. She was restitched but the coughing grew worse. The doctors discovered an embolism, a clot in an artery. They also found a haematoma in her abdomen, then more clots that had to be kept from travelling to her lungs. She went through four surgeries in a week and reflected later that her life had been in danger.

Reading about it, you marvel that she returned to tennis at all, never mind within six months, and can understand why she wanted to talk about why it is different for mums.

– The Times

Originally published as Matt Dickinson: Serena Williams’ frustration speaks for all who juggle motherhood with careers