Dr. Karsten Senkbeil
Teaches and researches at the University of Hildesheim, Germany, in the Department of Intercultural Communication. He has researched and published on sports cultures worldwide, and focuses on inter- and transcultural exchange processes between North America and Europe through sports and other forms of popular culture.
Email: senkbeil@uni-hildesheim.de
Statistically, elite athletes have few children during their active careers, because having a child seriously interrupts the routines of training and competing, for female athletes in particular. However, the Paris Olympics 2024 demonstrate that motherhood and participation in elite sport are not mutually exclusive, and a considerable number of women return to the Olympic spotlight after giving birth.
Studies show an increase of media attention to such situations. In fact, the media, sponsors, and athletes themselves have utilized maternity as an advertising vehicle. A central ideological premise appears to be that caring for a child while returning to peak athletic performance defines the athlete-mother’s achievements as even more remarkable, and her personality as even tougher, and even more tenacious.
Critical research on such media coverage hint at a mélange of ideological undertones. Progressive notes emphasize and support women’s accomplishments in balancing family with professionalism. On the other hand, narratives about athlete-mothers may in fact be embedded in reactionary, patriarchal patterns. By over-idealizing motherhood, and ‘selling it’ in advertising as ‘the greatest victory’ a woman can achieve, their athletic achievements may actually be devalued through this discourse.
I suggest that a full analysis of the ideological value projected on parenting in sports can only be complete if it includes ‘the other side of the aisle’ as a tertium comparationis: athlete-fathers. In fact, they have received little attention in scholarly work, which can only partially be explained by biology. Obviously, male athletes miss pregnancy, but once the child is born, there is – in societies that emphasize gender equity, at least in theory – no reason why an athlete-father’s and an athlete-mother’s routines of balancing childcare with their job should drastically differ.
An analysis of media discourse about successful athlete-parents at the Paris Olympics hints at remarkable patterns. To start with two examples from Germany: Angelique Kerber (silver-medalist in Rio 2016) received extensive attention concerning her comeback for the Olympic tournament in 2024, particularly because she had a daughter in 2023. It became a noteworthy topic in German media that Kerber was not staying in the Olympic Village, but rented an apartment in Paris for her family, in order to live with her daughter during the Olympics. When asked about that choice on German television, Kerber noted: “Without her, it wouldn’t work at all. I think many mothers will understand that”, emphasizing her priorities, and discursively alluding to a sense of solidarity among mothers. Laura Ludwig, beach volleyball gold medalist in 2016, gave a long interview to Der SPIEGEL about her ambitions for the 2024 Olympics. The interview discussed at length the challenges of being a star athlete and a mother of two. Ludwig recounted doubts, frustrations, and “the feeling of tearing apart my family” when travelling to competitions alone and shared how sleep deprivation impedes efficient training.
So how do athlete-fathers in the same situation speak about these challenges? How do the media report about fatherhood of Olympic medal aspirants?
The answer is: they don’t.
Again, two examples must suffice: Dennis Schröder, star basketball player and German flag bearer at Paris 2024, has three small children, who are regularly seen with him on the court after games. If and in how far childcare affects his career and training routine is never mentioned though. It is quietly assumed (or explicitly narrated by tabloid press) that his wife takes care of everything, so that he can fully concentrate on sports. Michael Jung, four times gold-winning equestrian, is a father of two, and footage of his Paris 2024 medal celebration with his three-year-old son on his arm was widely shared in German media. But whether lack of a good nights’ sleep is ever a problem for his performance, or where his wife and children stayed while he was competing in Paris, is impossible to know for German audiences: nobody asked Jung, and he did not volunteer any information on those matters.
The analysis of sports reporting about fatherhood by Olympic athletes indicates that, here too, ideological presuppositions appear to be commonplace: being an elite athlete requires time and dedication, so it appears to be common sense that the athlete’s child’s mother must be a stay-at-home mom, caring for child and household, and giving him the opportunity to normally train, travel, and compete. For female athletes, however, this is not the dominant narrative: their need to fulfill both roles, mother and athlete, is explicitly and extensively topicalized in interviews, and portrayed as an indicator of athlete-mothers’ tenacity and ‘bravery’.
In reality, there is reason to believe that female elite athletes with children rely on their partners and extended family in largely the same way as their male counterparts. Many female athletes in fact have gone on record explicitly remarking that family members picking up the slack (including their child’s father) are the cornerstones of their continued career. Still, the media rarely resist the urge to frame athlete-mothers as ‘supermoms’. Meanwhile, athlete-fatherhood appears as a side-note, in which children are cute, but largely unimportant mascots to their dad’s success.
As long as motherhood and fatherhood of elite athletes are framed so differently by the sports media, reactionary ideologies about femininity, masculinity, and parenting (by all genders) will remain in place and might stand in the way of true gender equity.
