Being a mom and an athlete are not mutually exclusive, and in recent years, some of the best athletes in the world—Olympic competitors—have fought for support in continuing to perform in their sports while also raising a family.
Some women have infants and young children or may still breastfeed when the games roll around. Faced with leaving their child home to compete or putting their career on hold to stay home, they forged a third option: change the world.
Olympic Parents & The Hardest Choice
Typically, when athletes head to the Olympic games, they will stay in a specially prepared area, an Olympic Village, with their fellow athletes. However, this area is for competitors and coaches—children have been traditionally banned, according to The Bump, and those parents who do take a child along are expected to pay for hotel rooms outside the Olympic Village.
For a breastfeeding mom, that can mean financial hardship. This year, after a battle led by French judo star Clarisse Agbegnenou and others, the Olympic Committee of France is providing hotel rooms for athletes from their country who are nursing infants. This allows access for co-sleeping and overnight nursing.
World Breastfeeding Week
As it happens, World Breastfeeding Week is just wrapping up, coinciding with about half of the Olympic competition, which will close in a few days. Some athletes, including those in the Olympics and Paralympics, have chimed in to share their experiences of nursing while competing.
Paralympic biker Sarah Storey of Britain shared photos during World Breastfeeding Week last year, for instance, of herself trying to balance cluster feeding and participating in the UK’s Tour Series.
Down Time Can Be Family Time
One of the biggest changes at this year’s Olympics in Paris is more family access in general. Aside from the French Olympic Committee’s decision to support breastfeeding moms, a new family room is also available within the Olympic Village.
Sponsored by P&G and Pampers, the room offers a comfortable space for moms to relax and have quality time with their kids between events. Pampers brand diapers and wipes are even being provided.
It’s not just an infant room, though. The facility includes a shelf of children’s books, ride-on toys, climbing structures, and comfy spaces for bonding time.
Athletic Advocacy
Like the hotel rooms for nursing moms, this family room didn’t spin out of thin air. It’s also the product of an effort by Olympic athletes, in this case, retired sprinter Allyson Felix from Team USA.
Felix announced her retirement at the end of the 2022 season, but that didn’t stop her from partnering with P&G to provide the family room. A parent herself, Felix, said, “That’s the beautiful thing about it. You are inside the village, so it’s so convenient. This space will be really meaningful to athlete parents.”
We’ve Come A Long Way
Women have fought hard over generations for equal rights and are still working to enjoy the same basic right men expect: to be able to have a family and career without being expected to choose one and sacrifice the other.
When the career in question is elite athletics, that adds a layer of complication since travel is involved, now, some of the best athletes in the world are proving that it can be done, and all it takes is a combination of dedication and support (well, along with that incredible skill). Olympics.com quoted the aforementioned Clarisse Agbegnenou:
“It hurts me to hear people saying, ‘we can do only one thing at a time’, ‘you can’t evolve in your job’ or ‘you can’t be a high-level athlete’ while being a mom…This is completely wrong.”
Abegnenou, Felix, Storey, and so many others are proving this — and they’re working to support other moms in proving it, too.
