Full Description
Although sport participation decreases on average for women once they become mothers, female athletes from the recreational, to the competitive, to the elite level have demonstrated that motherhood does not signal the end of sport engagement and athletic identities, or career and leadership roles. This is the first book to offer an in-depth examination of the nexus of women, sport and culture within the context of motherhood, uncovering new narratives that raise the profile of non-conformist performances.
The book brings together international researchers using innovative and rigorous qualitative methods to show how sport affords or constrains women's agency to devise, negotiate and live alternative versions of motherhood in and through sport. Presenting stories of sporting mothers in contexts including martial arts, leisure swimming, recreational running, triathlon and climbing, the book explores the shifting meaning and practices of motherhood across social, cultural and media/digital landscapes.
Deliberately challenging taken-for-granted ways of thinking about motherhood and sport, this book is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in the socio-cultural study of sport, gender and sport, women's studies, sport coaching, sport leadership, sport development, or qualitative and digital research methods.
Contents
1. Introduction, Part I: Critical approaches to data analysis, 2. Phenomenological insights on motherhood and aquatic embodiment, 3. 'Is training with your children a double-edged sword?': Motherhood and martial arts, 4. Non-motherhood and motherhood in sport: Entangled relations of care, 5. Uncovering stories of motherhood and coaching with story completion, 6. Materializing risk in the pregnant athlete: Using material-semiotic tools to examine black-boxed and dis-qualified 'facts' in the IOC evidence summaries, Part II: Mediation, technology and digital methods, 7. Searching, surfing and seeking Paralympian mothers in social media spaces, 8. Beyond linear understandings of mothers' sporting bodies: Digital self-tracking and spacetimemattering, 9. Using social media to explore elite athlete mothers and sponsorship: The potential of big data, Part III: Creative analytical approaches, 10. Pushing to the limits: A collaborative autoethnography of motherhood, disability, ambition and risk, 11. Mothers at the wall: Using creative nonfiction techniques to explore climbing and motherhood, 12. Getting back on the track: An ethnodrama of an elite mother runner's journey, 13. Navigating legacies of athlete abuse in motherhood: Creative analytical practices as a tool for uncovering post-sport embodiment and practices, Part IV: Future directions, 14. Future directions for research into sport and motherhood.
