This Winter Olympics is for moms

The motherhood penalty can be detrimental to a woman’s career. From fewer opportunities to be promoted to perceived competence at a job, researchers have found that mothers earn less money with each additional child they have. Conversely, for men, fatherhood comes with the opposite effect. Men in the workplace earn more money and are perceived to have a stronger work commitment when they become dads. This is all to say that when one thinks of working moms, Olympic athletes — which require years of intense physical and mental training — aren’t exactly the first to come to mind. But this year, the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics are changing that as mothers are center stage. According to Olympics.com, a record number of Olympic medallists are competing as moms for the first time this year. And it’s not just moms competing, but some of the most memorable moments from the Olympics so far are of mothers and their kids.

Take Italian long-track speedskater Francesca Lollobrigida, for example. On her 35th birthday, Lollobrigida set an Olympic record, won her first gold medal, and then celebrated with her two-year-old son in hand. Lollobrigida took interviews with the press, holding him and posing for photos. She also honestly shared that it hasn’t been easy balancing motherhood and being an Olympian, estimating that she is away from home roughly 250 days a year. “The message I want to show is I didn’t choose between a family, being a mom (and being a speed skater),” Lollobrigida said, according to the New York Times.

Kendall Coyne Schofield, a hockey player for Team USA, is a four-time Olympian, but this year is her first time competing as a mother. She told Women’s Health in 2024 that her son, who she had in 2023, has become fuel for her to continue her career and that she’s on a mission to redefine what it means to be a “hockey mom.” “So often when people think of a hockey mom, they think of the mom coming into the rink to watch her kids play,” she said. “I look at being a hockey mom as redefining what a hockey mom may be. And for me, that’s playing hockey with my child cheering me on.”

Then there’s Kaillie Humphries, an Olympic bobsleigh champion, who has also returned to the Olympics this year for the first time as a mother. She told Olympics.com she’s returned to bobsledding in a “very different body,” but she feels motherhood has given her a new level of strength. She added she feels “stronger and more empowered” than ever as a mom. Elana Meyers Taylor, an Olympian bobsleigh champion, also brought her two young sons this year, who she’s said travel with her everywhere. This year, participating in her fifth Olympic Games, she snagged her first gold medal. When the gold medal was confirmed, she embraced her two boys, who are both deaf, and the nanny of her children. “I’ve had different nannies throughout the years and every single one of them has done the work to help my kids get here and my husband, I can’t even put into words what this means and how many people it took to win this,” she told BBC Sport. Then there’s Sarah Schleper, who is skiing for Mexico; her 18-year-old son, Lasse Gaxiola, is also competing. For the first time, this mother-son duo is competing in the Olympics together.

Women have been competing in the Olympics since 1900. But as Humphries told USA Today Sports, female athletes have long been told that they had to choose between having children and being successful — or that becoming a mom meant their elite athlete careers would be over. If they did attempt to compete as moms, they faced their own motherhood penalty. Yet research shows there is a benefit to becoming a mom as an athlete; it can actually reduce performance pressure and refine training motivation.

Certainly, it hasn’t been an easy road for many of these women. On Mother’s Day 2019, Olympic Medalist runner Alysia Montaño shared her story in a viral New York Times op-ed about how she was penalized by Nike for becoming a mom. It sparked the #DreamMaternity movement, causing more elite female athletes to speak out. Olympic medallist runner Allyson Felix also wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about how Nike, as a sponsor, offered to pay her 70 percent less after having a baby. Following the public outcry, Nike announced a new maternity policy for sponsored athletes. Yet a setback struck again in the industry. Before the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2021, the International Olympic Committee prohibited families from accompanying athletes, including children who were still nursing, because of pandemic restrictions.

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However, progress is being made. In 2022, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) directed each sport governing body to include protections for the pregnancy and postpartum periods. Now pregnant athletes have health insurance coverage for up to a year after the birth of a child. At the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, Olympic and Paralympic parent athletes had access to a nursery in the Olympic Village for family time. Historically, families have not been allowed in the Olympic Village where athletes can stay. Unfortunately, there is no nursery this year, which is clearly a major missed opportunity and a disappointment to Olympian moms who had been advocating for childcare support.

“We are making headway with the USOPC and other NGBs (National Governing Bodies), but there’s still a long way to go to making maternal support standard at The Games,” Kristine David, a spokesperson for For All Mothers+, a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating the motherhood penalty, which was founded by Montaño, told The19th. “Our hope is that by the Summer 2028 Games, we will see ourselves as obsolete, and all provisions become standard.”

While I am not a female athlete, I was a spectator at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and found it very accommodating as a mom of two. I was given access to priority lines, stroller parking, and was one of three women breastfeeding their babies while watching a women’s hockey game. Mothers aren’t only participants this year, we’re also fans. Watching the best athletes in the world, knowing they’re moms too, made it all the more powerful and memorable.

Yes, there is still a long way to go for elite mom athletes competing in the Olympics, but the mere presence of mothers with their children — and them being so vocal about the challenges they faced to get where they are today — is changing the status quo. It shows the world that doing both is hard, but possible. And most importantly, that mothers have the right to take up space in a predominantly male-dominated event, on the field and in the stands. This alone forces these institutions to adapt to the reality of a mother’s life, instead of forcing moms to disappear from the event.