Serena Williams, Victoria Azarenka and Tsvetana Pironkova have combined motherhood with U.S. Open success
Serena Williams returns a shot to Maria Sakkari during the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open on Monday in Flushing Meadows. Credit: AP/Seth Wenig
I was six months pregnant the last time the Knicks were in the NBA Finals.
San Antonio in June is a brutal place to be when you are packing an extra 20 pounds, but what I remember most when my plane landed there for Game 1 was how thrilled I was to be covering the Finals and how excited I was for the offseason when I would become a mother.
I shared a cab to the hotel with a well-known colleague who works in television and has several children of his own. We talked about his kids, my due date and, of course, the Knicks. Then, as we pulled up to the hotel, he turned and said, “Enjoy it now. I don’t believe women should work after they have a family.”
That was 21 years ago and my daughter is now in college, but those words – and what they revealed about my colleague – still sting today.
It’s moments like these why I and many of the 23.5 million fulltime working mothers in the United States can’t help but pull for the three mothers who have made it to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open this year.
Serena Williams, Victoria Azarenka and Tsvetana Pironkova are the first trio of mothers to make it to the quarterfinals of the same Grand Slam tournament. All told, there were nine mothers in the main draw of the tournament this year.
Williams, the No. 3 seed, will play an all-mom quarterfinal today against Pironkova, a 2010 Wimbledon semifinalist who is playing in her first tournament since giving birth to her son in April 2018.
Azarenka, a single mother whose playing schedule has been erratic because of a custody battle that limits her traveling, won her first title as a mother a little more than a week ago at the Western & Southern Open. She is scheduled to play Elise Mertens Wednesday night.
All three moms are proving that ambition doesn’t, and shouldn’t have to, take a back seat to having a family.
"I’m so proud of the ladies. It’s incredible," Azarenka, 31, said in a television interview with ESPN. “It’s inspiring. I hope it’s inspiring for other women that they continue to go for their dreams and don’t only identify as mothers, but continue to do what they want to do.
She then added that being a mother is not the only thing they are. “We are also women who have dreams and goals and passions.”
Jamie Ladge, a professor of management at Northeastern University and the co-author of “Maternal Optimism: Forging Positive Paths Through Work and Motherhood” said working mothers are subject to all kinds of social scrutiny that working fathers are not.
“I see these women as super heroes,” Ladge said of the three players. “I see them as role models to girls and boys everywhere. It sets the tone that mothers are more than just mothers. Because clearly there are very deep-rooted preconceived notions about what a mother is and should be. For some reason, they are not allowed to do anything else. And when they do, they are subject to so much scrutiny it’s ridiculous because we don’t treat men the same way.”
Only three moms have ever won a Grand Slam tournament in the Open era: Kim Clijsters, Evonne Goolagong and Margaret Court. Williams, the tournament’s No. 3 seed, has the best chance of being the fourth.
Williams, who turns 39 at the end of the month, is trying once again to win her 24th Grand Slam title and tie Court’s record. Williams is 0-4 in the finals of Grand Slam tournaments since returning to play after the March 2018 after the birth of her daughter.
Even though it’s been three years since her daughter’s birth, coverage of Williams often examines whether she has changed as a player because of motherhood. Her competitive drive and focus have been questioned as if it were impossible for the best player in the history of the game to be able to focus on her profession while her daughter is in the arms of someone else.
“It’s so absurd,” Ladge said. “There are these assumptions some people still have of women that as soon as they have a baby, they are counted out….It’s the same in tennis as it is in the business world.”
Yes, this country’s 23.5 million working moms have vastly different concerns and realities from globetrotting professional tennis players. But anyone who has ever gone on pregnancy leave knows what it feels like to have assumptions and judgments made about our priorities and dedication to our careers and families.
It’s hard not to pull for the moms in this one.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
