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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Elite Sports and Performance Enhancement
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1548261
This article is part of the Research Topic Gender in Sports: Challenges, Impacts and Pathways to Equity View all articles
"It´s unrealistic": Experiences of Swedish Elite Female Ice Hockey Players Considering Parenthood Parenthood
Provisionally accepted- 1 Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
- 2 University of Agder, Kristiansand, Vest-Agder, Norway
The number of elite female athletes combining athletic careers with motherhood mothering has increased during the last decades. Many mother-athletes return to an equal or an even better level of performance postpartum. Despite numerous success stories across a variety of sports, there are currently no mother-athletes in Swedish elite ice hockey. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore how Swedish elite female ice hockey players perceive challenges associated with initiating and maintaining the mother-athlete role. Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 7 elite female ice hockey players (5 prepregnancy and 2 mothers/former athletes) and analyzed using thematic analysis. Thematic analysis revealed three main challenges facing elite female ice hockey players: a) Financial challengesMaking ends meet, b) Unclear maternity rightsA leap in the dark and c) You can't be what you can't seeNegative notions. Due to these challenges, the participants considered perceived combining elite ice hockey and parenthood mothering as incompatibleunrealistic. Consequently, they felt forced to either retire from elite sports early or postpone parenthood mothering to post career. Continued work with improving the financial support and developing clear maternity policies is essential to prevent early dropouts before elite female ice hockey players have reached peak performance. Enabling more players to prolong their athletic careers during pregnancy and postpartum will likely produce more positive mother-athlete role models. Further, keeping more players in the sport for a longer period could help women´s ice hockey to develop to its highest optimal quality (e.g., level and competition).
Keywords: performance, Career transitions, Dual role, work-life balance, women´s ice hockey List Paragraph, Indent: Left: 2, 53 cm, Space After: 8 pt
Received: 19 Dec 2024; Accepted: 17 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bergström, Høigaard, Aspvik and Sæther. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Max Bergström, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
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