“Nike Told Me To Dream Crazy, Until I Wanted A Baby.” Written in 2019, this is the title of Alysia Montano’s New York Times autobiography, recounting her challenging experiences being a pregnant athlete. Montano isn’t alone in her struggles. Through the article, she tells the stories of both herself, and other female athletes sponsored by Nike, and the wage cuts they received for choosing to have a baby. Olympian runners Allyson Felix and Kara Goucher, along with tennis star Serena Williams, are among those who’ve spoken out about the contrast in language surrounding male and female athletes having children. Both Felix and Montano received up to 70% pay cuts from Nike while being pregnant, however the company withdrew their stance after facing overwhelming backlash. For them and many others, this was the story of women who were athletes and mothers, until recently. “It’s an area that has definitely evolved pretty significantly in the last five years,” former president and CEO of The Seattle Storm, Karen Bryant, said speaking on the WNBA’s progress in supporting parents. In the WNBA in particular, the league realized that “if you’re going to be a progressive organization that’s run by women, owned by women, for women, you have to be on the leading edge of providing benefits for women and women not just as athletes but as mothers.” 

For expecting parents in the WNBA, their full salary is guaranteed, as well as other support for childcare and travelling. But it wasn’t always this way. Even though there are existing laws protecting the rights of pregnant employees, since athletes technically qualify as contractors, these same laws do not apply. If companies worried that athletes wouldn’t perform as well postpartum, players could lose sponsorships, endorsements, or have withheld or docked pay. Now, more and more women’s pro leagues are offering childcare benefits right off the bat, Bryant crediting this to the WNBA paving the way. The new League One Volleyball “just started, in their first year, and they come right out of the gate and they’re offering those same benefits, but I think it’s in large part because the WNBA has sort of led the way,” Bryant said. “They all have some sort of benefits for moms and pregnant women and women with older children,” Bryant continued. 

For all women, having a career in addition to a family can be a balancing act, working as an athlete adding an additional layer of challenge. “You’re expected in that job to perform physically and mentally at a super super high level,” Bryant said. “A lot of these women have waited a long time to play professional basketball in the United States, they love what they do. A lot of times players absolutely factor in the timing of a pregnancy so that they can try to be ready to play in a season.” For basketball players who choose to play year round, their job involves playing overseas, meaning they’re faced with an additional dilemma when family planning. For those players, the question is: “when do you have the child? Do you get pregnant overseas or do you have the baby in the United States?” Bryant shared. Including that, new parents must decide whether to take an infant overseas, or leave them with a family member while they play during the [US] off season. “For a lot of women, especially in the early days of the league when all of them were going for seven to eight months, [it] was a really really, sometimes heart wrenching, dilemma,” Bryant said. “So now that the [WNBA] league is really concentrated in the United States and as its popularity [grows] in the United States and they make more money, fewer and fewer players are going overseas,” Bryant said. Due to this shift in the playing environment, this will likely mean that “more of these players are going to have children.”

Montano is now a mother of three and works as the CEO of For Mothers, a non-profit focused on supporting mothers in the workplace. As of late 2019, she has a new sponsorship with Cadenshae, a New Zealand maternity activewear brand, who’ve expressed their full support of her activism and eventual plan to return to running competitively. Due to the backlash they’ve faced, Nike has since changed their maternity policy to guarantee the pay of pregnant athletes.