Resistance and Mothers’ Experiences in Postnatal Team Sport: “Didn’t You Just Have a Kid?”

Abstract

Postnatal women’s physically active leisure experiences can sometimes be inhibited by gendered expectations of motherhood. As a result, participation in leisure, such as community team sport, may be a context for resisting ideologies such as gender and intensive mothering. In this paper, we critically examine postnatal women’s return to community team sport and gendered expectations of motherhood. Using narrative methods, eighteen interviews were conducted with six postnatal women participating in three interviews over a three-month duration. Six creative nonfiction stories were constructed to represent the mothers’ unique, yet shared experiences and their return to community team sport. Emphasis is placed on the complicated relationship between resistance, reproduction, and empowerment as postnatal women encounter the gendered expectations of motherhood. We additionally explored the potential of stories, community, and support as central to the process of resisting gendered expectations.