20 May 2024
The Paris 2024 Olympics open the door to athlete mothers, with rooms to breastfeed and sleep near their children, and mark an important step for gender equality in sport.
Paris 2024 is preparing to be an extraordinary event not only for sport, but also for gender equality and the rights of athlete mothers. Because the French Olympic committee is providing rooms where they can breastfeed and sleep with their babies, athlete mothers will at last be able to combine a sporting career with motherhood.
The decision shows how important it is to give athletes the best possible conditions, and to remove the practical difficulties of balancing family and sport. Breastfeeding during competition used to force many athlete mothers to choose between motherhood and a career.
It may sound like an obvious thing, but the French committee’s decision is historic. It is the result of a fight carried on by many athletes. Breastfeeding during competition was a recurring problem, against the idea that being a mother and a high-level athlete are incompatible.
The decision protects the balance of the family and lets athletes concentrate on competition, without the logistics of combining motherhood and sport. Until now it was not possible: anyone not competing, including partners and children, was banned from the Olympic Village, first for lack of space, and then because very young children were thought to harm the concentration and recovery of other athletes.
Paris 2024 is meant to be the Games of gender equality, with equal numbers of male and female athletes and other measures to close the gap, such as naming the streets of the Olympic village after local or national women distinguished in sport or public life, and practical measures such as letting athlete mothers breastfeed. It is a victory for the mothers who have fought for years for the right to breastfeed during competition.
In the past, new mothers had to breastfeed entirely outside the village, trying to reconcile travel, their children’s needs and Olympic training and competition. That often led to two outcomes. One was to stop breastfeeding, with the physical and psychological cost of a decision taken by someone who needs all her energy to concentrate and win. Many athletes have had to fight inflammation and mastitis, and guilt, before they even faced their opponents. The other was not to go to the Games at all, giving up the most important competition in their sport. The cyclist Laura Kenny, who had her first child a year after winning her fourth Olympic gold at Rio 2016, said: “Breastfeeding was complicated. As athletes, our maternity leave is while you are pregnant. After that, nothing holds you back from training. You just have to carry on.”
Athletes should be free to choose how to manage motherhood and a sporting career, without giving up either. The French example should not remain a one-off. It should become the first of a new habit, so that every athlete mother has the same opportunities and the same rights.
