Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health

Advancing Qualitative Research on Motherhood and High Performance Sport

Pregnancy and motherhood have been associated with the end of a sport career and/or with sportswomen not reaching their potential, as they experience tensions and discrimination due to social, cultural, and structural barriers. Yet sportswomen have experienced success post-partum since the 1970s, gaining greater acceptance and visibility of motherhood in high performance sport and discourses. Over the last 20 years, researchers from multiple disciplinary perspectives (e.g., sociology, cultural studies, psychology, coaching, sport science) have used a variety of qualitative methods (e.g., interviews, focus groups, policy analyses, media analyses) to tease out these tensions. This diversity of qualitative research findings has shown that sport performance and careers for athlete mothers is intertwined with constraint, empowerment, and resistance. This research has afforded mothers an opportunity to ‘speak’ via a range of contemporary qualitative research approaches to open transformative possibilities and non-conformist gendered practices concerning motherhood and sport.

This special issue will build on this research by centralizing novel, innovative, and rigorous qualitative research methods/methodologies to expand understanding of less explored topics, in the motherhood and high performance sport research nexus. For this collection, high performance sport will encompass national or international level competitors, medal winners, Olympians, and professional or semi-professional contexts, where athletes strive for peak performance and achievement.

The issue aims to push thinking beyond the ‘same old’ approaches to qualitative research to uncover how QRSEH can be responsive to the nuances and complexity of contemporary motherhood and high performance sport. To accomplish this vision, we seek qualitative research from diverse disciplinary backgrounds (e.g., psychology, sociology, cultural studies, coaching, sport science). We are particularly interested in submissions that focus on intersectionality (e.g., sexual orientation, (dis)ability, race, age), coaching or mothers in sport leadership, parasport, assisted reproductive technologies (e.g., egg freezing, in vitro fertilization), queer or LGBTQ+ motherhood, non-western countries or sport systems, embodiment and/or physicality during pregnancy or post-partum, and critical policy/guideline analyses.

Papers highlighting original qualitative methods/methodologies and theoretical excavations related to motherhood and high performance sport are particularly welcome. 

Qualitative methods and/or methodological illustrations in empirical submissions might include – but not limited to- the following as they relate to parameters of the special issue call:

• Digital media (as cultural site or methods)
• Autoethnography
• Interviews and/or focus groups               
• Phenomenology traditions
• Arts-based methods                                    
• Creative non-fiction (re)presentation
• Diaries/journals                                       
• Forms of discourse, conversation, or narrative analysis
• Community/participatory traditions             
• Critical paradigms/perspectives
• Indigenous methodologies and/or decolonizing approaches