When an athlete becomes a father or a mother: identity between career and family

“I saw my daughter’s first steps on my phone. In a hotel room, the day before a match. My partner filmed it and wrote: ‘Look!’ I watched it fifteen times. Then I went to dinner with the team and didn’t tell anyone how much it hurt.”

A female athlete could describe this scene too, except her story would be different. She wouldn’t be watching first steps on a phone — she would most likely be wondering whether she would ever compete again, whether her body would come back, and whether she was selfish for even wanting it to. When an athlete becomes a parent, two identities meet, and both of them want everything: all the time, all the energy and all the attention.

In this post I write about what happens when an elite or very committed recreational athlete becomes a father or a mother. About why this transition is different for women and for men in sport, about guilt that flows in both directions, and about how to think of priorities as something other than a ranking in which one thing must always win. I write from the perspective of psychotherapy, not sport psychology — I explain where the line between them lies towards the end.

Two identities that both want everything

In 1993, Britton Brewer and colleagues described the concept of athletic identity: how strongly a person experiences themselves as an athlete and how much their self-image depends on it. A strong athletic identity is useful — it gives motivation, structure and meaning. But it also has a shadow: when everything you are is tied to sport, every change in sport shakes you yourself. Researchers most often describe this in relation to injury and the end of a career, which I have written about in When the career ends: who you are when you’re no longer an athlete.

Parenthood is the second great identity, and it arrives with its own weight. It isn’t simply a new task alongside the existing ones — it changes how you see yourself. The anthropologist Dana Raphael coined the word matrescence for the transformation a woman goes through in becoming a mother, by analogy with adolescence: a period in which the body, emotions, relationships and self-image are reshaped all at once. Fathers go through a similar, if less described, transition. You can read about what a transition is and why it is demanding in the knowledge base under transition.

When these two identities meet in one person, a tension arises that is not a sign you are doing something wrong. It is a natural response to loving two things that both need a great deal of you.

What we know about the transition to parenthood

The transition to parenthood is one of the best-researched transitions in adult life — partly because it is so demanding. Brian Doss and colleagues followed couples for eight years and, in 2009, reported that relationship satisfaction noticeably declines for most couples after the birth of a child, and does so faster and more abruptly than in couples who did not have children. In their book When Partners Become Parents, Carolyn and Philip Cowan described how, after a baby arrives, partners often drift apart in their expectations about dividing the work, careers and time for themselves.

Something else matters too: distress after the birth of a child is not just a women’s issue. In a 2010 meta-analysis, James Paulson and Sharnail Bazemore gathered research on depression in fathers and found that roughly one in ten fathers experiences it in the period from pregnancy to one year after the birth. In fathers it is often overlooked because it looks different — as irritability, withdrawal into work or training, more alcohol. I have written about postnatal depression in mothers in Postnatal depression: when you “should” be happy and you are not.

For an athlete, something particular is added to what applies to all parents: a career with a short shelf life that doesn’t wait. Someone in an office can take a year off and come back to a similar position. An athlete often knows that every season they miss is a season that will never come again.

Female athletes and motherhood: a body that is no longer just an instrument

For a female athlete, pregnancy is an encounter with the fact that her body is no longer just her instrument. For years she trained it, measured it, controlled it. Now it changes in its own way, in a direction she cannot choose.

In 2016, an expert group of the International Olympic Committee reviewed research on exercise during pregnancy in recreational and elite athletes (Bø and colleagues). One of the findings was that there is little research on elite athletes specifically, and that decisions about training during pregnancy and after birth must be individual. That is why I give no advice here about when and how to train — that is a question for your gynaecologist and a doctor who knows sport. What I can write about is what happens alongside it in the mind and in relationships.

Athletes who become mothers often describe some similar experiences:

• The question “when are you coming back?”, which they hear from coaches, sponsors, the media and relatives — often during pregnancy, sometimes as the first question after the birth.
• Comparing themselves with their body before. The body that was the measure of success is now recovering, not just “getting back into shape”. This can be painful, because before it was guided by control and progress.
• Doubting herself as a mother if she wants to return — and doubting herself as an athlete if she no longer does.
• An organisation that wasn’t built for them. Training camps, travel and competition schedules were designed for people without babies.

None of this means motherhood is the end of a career. Many athletes return after giving birth and go on competing. It simply means they return as a different person — and that more than training is needed for that.

A father on the road

For fathers the story is different, but not easier. Outwardly, the career of an athlete who becomes a father often carries on almost unchanged. The team travels, the season runs, the expectations remain. Nobody asks “when are you coming back?”, because he never went anywhere. And that is precisely part of the problem: the change he goes through is invisible.

A father on the road often lives in two worlds at once. At training camp, his mind is at home. At home, his mind is on the next match. The firsts — the first smile, the first steps, the first illness — he experiences on a screen. Meanwhile, his partner cares for the child alone for much of the time, which can create a quiet resentment on both sides: she feels alone, he feels that no one at home understands how much it costs him to be away. I have written about how sport gets tangled up in a relationship in Athletes and relationships: love between training, travel and competition.

Many athlete fathers don’t show any of this. They have learned that personal things stay outside the changing room. Some throw themselves into training even harder, because it is the only place where they know what they’re doing. From the outside, it looks like dedication. From the inside, it is often an escape from the feeling of not being good enough at home.

Guilt that flows both ways

If I had to name one emotion that athlete parents describe most often, it would be guilt. And this guilt is particular, because it flows in two directions at once.

When you go to training, you feel guilty towards your child and your partner. When you stay at home with a sick child and miss training, you feel guilty towards the team, the coach, yourself and all the years you have invested in sport. There is no position in which you are in the clear. Every choice is, at the same time, a betrayal of something else.

It helps to understand guilt a little better. Guilt is an emotion that alerts us that we have violated something that matters to us. When it is proportionate, it is useful — it helps us put things right. But when it is constant, regardless of what you do, it no longer points to an action; it becomes the background of your whole life. I have described the difference between the two in Guilt and shame are not the same — and the difference matters, and you can find a short explanation in the knowledge base under guilt. Mothers often feel it especially strongly — more on that in Mother’s guilt: why the most devoted mothers are the ones who feel they do too little.

Priorities are not a ranking

When athlete parents find themselves in this tension, they often look for the right order. “Family comes first” or “now is the time for my career, family will come later”. Both sound clear, but in everyday life they rarely work. Life isn’t a ranking in which one thing always comes first. It is more like a balance that has to be found again every week.

It helps to see priorities as an agreement, not as a decision made once and for all. An agreement between you and your partner, sometimes also with the coach, the club, the grandparents who help. And an agreement that can change — differently before the Olympic Games than during the season, differently when the child is ill than when all is calm.

This is how a conversation might sound in which two people aren’t arguing about what matters more but are looking for an agreement (the conversation is composite, not a real person):

“So you’ll be at training camp for three weeks again, and I’m here alone with her.”
“I know. And I know it’s not easy for you. It isn’t for me either, when I only see her on a screen.”
“It’s not that you shouldn’t go. It’s that I feel you don’t even notice.”
“I do notice. I just don’t know what to do so that it isn’t wrong. Could we work out what would help you most in these three weeks?”

Nothing practical was resolved in this conversation. The camp will still be three weeks. But something more important changed: he heard that she isn’t against his career, but against the feeling of being invisible. She heard that he does care. Only from there can an agreement grow.

Exercise: a weekly conversation about three circles

Do this exercise as a couple, once a week — on a Sunday evening, for example. It takes twenty minutes. If you are raising your child alone, you can do it with someone who helps you with care.

1. Each of you draws three circles: sport, child and family, me. Next to each circle, write how much room it will get this week — not in hours, but in words: “a lot”, “some”, “almost none”.
2. Show each other your drawings. Don’t comment straight away. Each of you says, in your own words, what the other drew: “I can see you think you’ll have almost no time for yourself this week.”
3. Find one point where you don’t match and talk about it starting with “what worries me most is …”, not “you always …”.
4. Agree on one concrete thing that will take some weight off the other person this week: one evening without phones, one fewer morning session, one call once the child is already in bed.
5. Start next Sunday with this: how did the agreed thing go? It isn’t about grading, but about learning what helps you both.

The “me” circle is third on purpose. Athlete parents most often erase it first. But a parent who has nothing for themselves eventually can’t give anything either to sport or to their child.

What a child really needs

One of the hardest thoughts for athlete parents is: “My child will suffer because I’m not there enough.” The thought is understandable, but attachment research shows something that may ease it. What matters most for secure attachment is not the amount of time, but the quality of the response: whether the child gets a response when they need it, whether the adult is truly present when they are with them, and whether the relationship is repaired after a break.

A child whose father is often away can develop a secure attachment — if they have at least one stable, responsive person at home, and if the father, when he is home, isn’t somewhere else in his mind. The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott wrote about the “good enough mother”, not the perfect one. The idea applies to both parents. A child doesn’t need parents who never leave. They need parents who come back and who talk openly about leaving.

And a child growing up with an athlete parent also sees something precious: an adult who loves something, who perseveres and who knows how to lose. That is no small thing.

Where this doesn’t apply

I want to be clear about the limits of this post.

For physical questions, the right person is a doctor. When and how to train during pregnancy, when to return after giving birth, what breastfeeding means for training — these are questions for a gynaecologist and a sports medicine doctor. Psychotherapy doesn’t replace that.

For getting back into competitive form, the right person is a sport psychologist. If you are worried about focus, motivation or fear of competing after your return, a sport psychologist can help you more directly. I have described when each professional is the right one in Psychotherapy for athletes: when a coach and a sport psychologist aren’t enough.

With signs of depression or severe anxiety after the birth, see a doctor first. If, as a mother or a father, you feel for weeks that nothing brings you joy, if you can’t sleep even when the baby sleeps, or if thoughts arise of harming the baby or yourself, go to your GP or gynaecologist, who can refer you to a psychiatrist. In distress, you can call the crisis line Klic v duševni stiski on 01 520 99 00 in Slovenia (every day from 7 pm to 7 am) or the Samaritans helpline Samarijan on 116 123 in Slovenia (24 hours a day). In an emergency, call 112.

For contracts and rights, the right person is a lawyer or a players’ union. Questions about club contracts, sponsors and rights during pregnancy are not psychological, even though they bring a great deal of distress.

And finally: for some, this transition goes smoothly. If that is how it is for you, there is no need to go looking for a problem. This post is for those who recognise themselves in the tension.

How psychotherapy can help

In psychotherapy we don’t look for the right order between sport and family. We look at what lies behind your decisions. Why is the guilt so loud? Where does the feeling come from that you are only worth something when you win? How did your own parents balance work and family — and what did you carry with you from that?

In relational family therapy, in which I am training under supervision, it often turns out that the question “am I a good parent?” isn’t only a question about the present. It echoes experiences with your own parents: a father who wasn’t there, a mother who gave up everything, or love that came only with achievement. For people who want to see these patterns in one place, I offer a longer, 90-minute genogram session, A Look into the Past, in which we draw your family tree together and look for the patterns that repeat. I also work with English-speaking clients, in person in Ljubljana.

If you are interested in how parenthood changes identity beyond sport, read more in Parenthood as a transition: who am I now that I am a mother or a father? and in the knowledge base under identity.

What to remember

• When an athlete becomes a parent, two identities that both want everything meet — the tension between them is not a sign you are doing something wrong.
• Female athletes face above all a body that is no longer just an instrument, and the question “when are you coming back?”; athlete fathers face the invisibility of their change, and being away.
• Guilt flows both ways — towards your family when you train, and towards your sport when you are at home. When it no longer points to an action, it is worth looking deeper.
• Priorities are not a ranking but an agreement that needs regular renewing.
• For physical questions see a doctor, for competitive form a sport psychologist, and for signs of depression in a mother or father, a doctor first.