haterade: why are we romanticizing this?

it's ok to take parental leave, I promise!

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A quick little rant for you today.

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Please tell me why every women’s sports account that I follow has spent the past few days posting variations of “women are so strong omg!!!” in response to Tennessee WBB head coach Kim Caldwell returning to the sidelines just a week after giving birth?

espnw

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People who watch the game live reported that the broadcasters were similarly impressed with Caldwell’s return. What are we doing here, guys? There’s a reason the first three months after giving birth are called “the fourth trimester”—it’s because it takes months for your body to recover from the traumatic event of birthing a whole-ass human person.

Let me tell you what’s happening with the body of someone who is one-week postpartum: vaginal pain and soreness, vaginal bleeding, exhaustion, uterine contractions, breast milk production that leads to engorgement and leaking (even if you aren’t nursing a baby, your body will likely still produce milk that needs to dry up and that doesn’t happen overnight), if you are nursing you need to do it every two hours at a minimum, hormonal fluctuations that lead to challenges regulating mood or emotions.

No one should be returning to work in that state, no matter how much help and support they have from family. Especially not to a physically and emotionally taxing job like coaching D-1 women’s basketball. There are plenty of people in this country without paid leave who have no choice but to return to work immediately, but Caldwell is not one of those people. She is employed full-time by a university. She has benefits. She should use them. At the same time, Caldwell is functioning within a system and a culture that’s not designed to support her body’s needs.

The sexism and racism of late-stage capitalism encourage new mothers to push themselves because they are punished if they don’t. “The Motherhood Penalty” describes the way that having a baby can negatively impact women’s careers—they may be fired, miss out on promotions, or earn less as a result of taking time off to give birth or due to the perception that being a parent will take time and attention away from their job.

thegistusa

A post shared by @thegistusa

togethxr

A post shared by @togethxr

(No shade to Dawn Staley, who was asked a question in a press conference and answered the best way she could. Sure, maybe women do have the strength of 10 men. Maybe they don’t. Either way, they shouldn’t have to.)

There’s more to this, as well. “Sports mothers, the story goes, are superwomen – Marvel-movie-strong authors of successful comeback stories, the ultimate examples of what elite athletes’ bodies can do,” I wrote for Global Sport Matters in 2021. I continued:

However, this framing of parenthood also can be harmful. After all, giving birth is neither superhuman nor extraordinary; it is, in fact, very human and extremely ordinary (if, at times, dangerous). To lose sight of that fact is to strip athlete mothers of their basic humanity; to further contextualize sports as a masculine sphere where women don’t truly belong; and to gloss over the ongoing failure of teams, leagues, and organizations across sports to provide adequate support for elite athletes who also want or have children.

And while Caldwell is not competing at an elite level, she is coaching at one. She also isn’t Black woman, but she coaches a team of predominantly Black women, to whom she is a leader and a mentor. And this narrative about a need to be “superhuman” disproportionately affects Black women athletes, and those women are also more likely to be impacted by maternal mortality and complications.

“University of North Carolina scholar and associate dean Dr. Cheryl Woods-Giscombe, who studies health disparities affecting African-Americans, has coined the term ‘Superwoman Schema’ to describe the tendencies of Black women to push for success with limited resources and feel obligations to present an image of strength to the world, to self-sacrifice, and to avoid seeming vulnerable,” I wrote.

“All of these pressures can have negative health impacts. Black women are also more likely to suffer maternal complications and have higher rates of maternal mortality, making it particularly harmful to see them as ‘super.’”

“I love my team,” Caldwell said when asked about her quick return to the job. “I ask a lot of them. I made sure I would give my best to them.” That’s a lovely sentiment, but you can’t give anyone your best if you aren’t taking care of your physical health. The example she is setting for her players is one where you push through injury or physical trauma, grit your teeth and keep going. She is communicating that there is value and valor in that. It’s the same kind of harmful cultural ideals that encourage athletes to play through injury, at a cost to their long-term health and well-being. And its a particularly dangerous message to be sending to a team of young Black women athletes.

This is a cultural problem though, as evidenced by the media framing of this as a heroic feat. Watching a woman coach her way through her postpartum recovery isn’t something to be lauded or encouraged, and it’s clear from the comments section of these posts that many people agree. Instead, I hope the people around Caldwell can encourage her to take a break, take a nap, and let her body heal. She deserves that time—as does her baby. Her players will benefit, too, from having a coach who sets an example of what it means to care for ourselves in a world that wants to push us too hard all the time.