Triple careers of athletes: exploring the challenges of planning a pregnancy among female elite athletes using semi-structured interviews

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Abstract

Background

The challenging factors that elite athletes perceive for combining their sportive career with planning a pregnancy and motherhood need to be identified in order to develop supportive measures. Therefore, this phenomenological qualitative study aimed to explore challenges associated with planning a pregnancy among female, non-pregnant elite athletes.

Methods

Semi-structured skype-interviews were performed among female elite athletes (athletes competing on national or international level) aged 28 years or older. Using Mayring’s qualitative content analysis approach, anchor examples served to identify potential challenges of planning a pregnancy which were categorized independently by two researchers.

Results

Interviews of 16 elite athletes (mean age 30.7 years) entered analysis. Eleven challenges of planning a pregnancy were identified, categorized into organizational / environmental, financial, personal, and physical factors.

Conclusions

With regard to financial challenges, we propose mandatory maternity leave and continuation of the contracts and salary. Furthermore, mentoring programs may help to provide support and advice to new generations of female elite athletes and help to reduce concerns regarding the wish of becoming pregnant during a sportive career. In order to reduce physical concerns regarding pregnancy and exercise, we see a need for scientific studies investigating the association of sport discipline specific characteristics on sportive performance and the mother´s, fetus’ and child´s health. Finally, the results of the current study may be used in future quantitative studies to test specific hypotheses.

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Most cited references 27

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Skype interviewing: The new generation of online synchronous interview in qualitative research

Roksana Janghorban, Robab Roudsari, Ali Taghipour (2014)

The most commonly used method for data collection in qualitative research is interviewing. With technology changes over the last few decades, the online interview has overcome time and financial constraints, geographical dispersion, and physical mobility boundaries, which have adversely affected onsite interviews. Skype as a synchronous online service offers researchers the possibility of conducting individual interviews as well as small focus groups, comparable to onsite types. This commentary presents the characteristics of the Skype interview as an alternative or supplemental choice to investigators who want to change their conventional approach of interviewing.

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Pregnancy and Motherhood During Surgical Training

Gifty Kwakye, Manuel Castillo-Angeles, Douglas Smink … (2018)

Question What is the perception and experience of pregnant general surgery residents? Findings This national survey of 347 general surgeons who have had 1 or more pregnancies during residency revealed concerns about unmitigated work schedules during pregnancy, negative stigma associated with pregnancy during training, dissatisfaction with maternity leave options, inadequate lactation and childcare support, and desire for greater mentorship on work-life integration. These challenges were associated with 39% of participants seriously considering leaving residency and 30% reporting they would advise a female medical student against pursuing a career in surgery. Meaning Multiple challenges facing pregnant surgical residents may negatively influence career satisfaction and must be addressed to attract and retain the most talented workforce. Importance Although family priorities influence specialty selection and resident attrition, few studies describe resident perspectives on pregnancy during surgical training. Objective To directly assess the resident experience of childbearing during training. Design, Setting, and Participants A self-administered 74-question survey was electronically distributed in January 2017 to members of the Association of Women Surgeons, to members of the Association of Program Directors in Surgery listserv, and through targeted social media platforms. Surgeons who had 1 or more pregnancies during an Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education–accredited US general surgery residency program and completed training in 2007 or later were included. Important themes were identified using focus groups of surgeons who had undergone pregnancy during training in the past 7 years. Additional topics were identified through MEDLINE searches performed from January 2000 to July 2016 combining the keywords pregnancy , resident , attrition , and parenting in any specialty. Main Outcomes and Measures Descriptive data on perceptions of work schedule during pregnancy, maternity leave policies, lactation and childcare support, and career satisfaction after childbirth. Results This study included 347 female surgeons (mean [SD] age, 30.5 [2.7] years) with 452 pregnancies. A total of 297 women (85.6%) worked an unmodified schedule until birth, and 220 (63.6%) were concerned that their work schedule adversely affected their health or the health of their unborn child. Residency program maternity leave policies were reported by 121 participants (34.9%). A total of 251 women (78.4%) received maternity leave of 6 weeks or less, and 250 (72.0%) perceived the duration of leave to be inadequate. The American Board of Surgery leave policy was cited as a major barrier to the desired length of leave by 268 of 326 respondents (82.2%). Breastfeeding was important to 329 (95.6%), but 200 (58.1%) stopped earlier than they wished because of poor access to lactation facilities and challenges leaving the operating room to express milk. Sixty-four women (18.4%) had institutional support for childcare, and 231 (66.8%) reported a desire for greater mentorship on integrating a surgical career with motherhood and pregnancy. A total of 135 (39.0%) strongly considered leaving surgical residency, and 102 (29.5%) would discourage female medical students from a surgical career, specifically because of the difficulties of balancing pregnancy and motherhood with training. Conclusions and Relevance The challenges of having children during surgical residency may have significant workforce implications. A deeper understanding is critical to prevent attrition and to continue recruiting talented students. This survey characterizes these issues to help design interventions to support childbearing residents. This survey study assesses the experience of surgeons with childbearing during training.

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Impact of prenatal exercise on neonatal and childhood outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Margie Davenport, Victoria L Meah, Stephanie-May Ruchat … (2018)

We aimed to identify the relationship between maternal prenatal exercise and birth complications, and neonatal and childhood morphometric, metabolic and developmental outcomes. Systematic review with random-effects meta-analysis and meta-regression. Online databases were searched up to 6 January 2017. Studies of all designs were eligible (except case studies and reviews) if published in English, Spanish or French, and contained information on the relevant population (pregnant women without contraindication to exercise), intervention (subjective/objective measures of frequency, intensity, duration, volume or type of exercise, alone (‘exercise-only’) or in combination with other intervention components (eg, dietary; ‘exercise+cointervention’)), comparator (no exercise or different frequency, intensity, duration, volume, type or trimester of exercise) and outcomes (preterm birth, gestational age at delivery, birth weight, low birth weight ( 4000 g), small for gestational age, large for gestational age, intrauterine growth restriction, neonatal hypoglycaemia, metabolic acidosis (cord blood pH, base excess), hyperbilirubinaemia, Apgar scores, neonatal intensive care unit admittance, shoulder dystocia, brachial plexus injury, neonatal body composition (per cent body fat, body weight, body mass index (BMI), ponderal index), childhood obesity (per cent body fat, body weight, BMI) and developmental milestones (including cognitive, psychosocial, motor skills)). A total of 135 studies (n=166 094) were included. There was ‘high’ quality evidence from exercise-only randomised controlled trials (RCTs) showing a 39% reduction in the odds of having a baby >4000 g (macrosomia: 15 RCTs, n=3670; OR 0.61, 95% CI 0.41 to 0.92) in women who exercised compared with women who did not exercise, without affecting the odds of growth-restricted, preterm or low birth weight babies. Prenatal exercise was not associated with the other neonatal or infant outcomes that were examined. Prenatal exercise is safe and beneficial for the fetus. Maternal exercise was associated with reduced odds of macrosomia (abnormally large babies) and was not associated with neonatal complications or adverse childhood outcomes.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Pavel Dietz: pdietz@uni-mainz.de

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Pregnancy Childbirth

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Pregnancy Childbirth

Title: BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1471-2393

Publication date (Electronic): 15 August 2022

Publication date PMC-release: 15 August 2022

Publication date Collection: 2022

Volume: 22

Electronic Location Identifier: 643

Affiliations

[1 ]GRID grid.5802.f, ISNI 0000 0001 1941 7111, Institute of Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine, , University Medical Centre, University of Mainz, ; Mainz, Germany

[2 ]GRID grid.5110.5, ISNI 0000000121539003, Institute of Human Movement Science, Sport and Health, , University of Graz, ; Graz, Austria

Article

Publisher ID: 4967

DOI: 10.1186/s12884-022-04967-7

PMC ID: 9377111

PubMed ID: 35971097

SO-VID: e1a118e0-91d0-4b34-9e3f-89a128cd4354

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

History

Date received : 24 January 2022

Date accepted : 5 August 2022

Funding

Funded by: Universitätsmedizin der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (8974)

Open Access :

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Obstetrics & Gynecology

Keywords: pregnancy,maternity,elite athlete,women,career

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Obstetrics & Gynecology

Keywords: pregnancy, maternity, elite athlete, women, career

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Triple careers of athletes: exploring the challenges of planning a pregnancy among female elite athletes using semi-structured interviews

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Abstract

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Advocacy for Maternal and Women’s Health

Most cited references 27

Skype interviewing: The new generation of online synchronous interview in qualitative research

Pregnancy and Motherhood During Surgical Training

Impact of prenatal exercise on neonatal and childhood outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis

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