Babes, Balls, and Babies: A Working Ethnography of Motherhood

"Women's professional athletics in America---part business venture, part self-help group, part sociological movement---has become an intriguing site for exploring the relationship of women to the global socio-cultural matrix. In American women's sports, particularly team sports, women's bodies and their representations operate as shorthand for the shifting gendered landscape of America. At this junction, we find that even as Chaka Kahn sings, ""I'm every woman"" all women regardless of race, class or sexual orientation struggled with the supermom/super-person mythos that has become implicated in working motherhood. The Super Mother myth has been is reinforced and even celebrated in the media representations of female athletes. From Sheryl Swoopes to the mothers of the Women's World Cup team motherhood and professional athletics are not only seen as possible but perhaps as natural as shooting a basket or defending the goal. Yet, despite all the media attention we still find that women of all ages, races and sexualities are locked in emotional and psychological battle around the motherhood and reproduction. This dissertation is a critical ethnographic study of motherhood and sports in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The purpose of this project is two-fold. First, to record and highlight working mothers experiences as mothers and as workers with a focus on the role of sport/work in shaping women's emotional, physical and psychological responses to work and motherhood. It explores the cross-section of women's reproductive lives and experiences through interviews with mothers of the Women's National Basketball League (WNBA) and the Women's United Soccer Association (W*USA). Using these interviews as a grounding point this study goes on to explore the often difficult and tense relationship between women, motherhood and work regardless of whether one is a mother or not by including experiences and commentary from women who are not professional athletes but also working mothers and women who desire to be mothers. Second, the purpose is to analyze the methodology of interviewing. It explores the processes of interviewing and the subsequent ""writing-up"" of interviews by authors. In the tradition of Behar (2003), it advocates for visible presence and vulnerability of the author as both interviewer and writer."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Kinesiology and Community Health

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Metz, Jennifer Lynn

Contributors dc:contributor

• Cole, C.L.

• Anthropology, Cultural

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3202142

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/86376