More Than a Line Item: How Mothers in Sport Are Building a New Playbook

For Alysia Montaño, the question was never whether motherhood and athletic ambition could coexist. She had already lived the answer.

Montaño raced while eight months pregnant. She returned to win national titles at six and 10 months postpartum. She traveled to compete at the World Championships while pumping breast milk. But behind those visible moments was another reality: navigating a sports industry that wasn’t necessarily built with mothers in mind.

“I wanted to make the invisible visible,” Montaño told a room of athletes, advocates and sports industry leaders gathered at Strava’s San Francisco headquarters on September 17. 

“I didn’t know that moment was going to go viral. That’s not why I did it. Why I did it was for all the mothers who came before me and for hope for the future.”

Years later, Montaño is working to turn that visibility into infrastructure.

That work brought For All Mothers+ to Strava HQ for the public launch of the Mother in Sport Collective (MISC), an industry alliance bringing brands together around a shared goal: changing the systems that can make it harder for mothers to remain in sport.

Making mothers a forethought, not an afterthought

The “motherhood penalty” is often discussed in terms of careers and earnings. In sport, it can also show up in contracts, competition schedules, travel, childcare, lactation needs and the realities of returning to training after pregnancy.

“The motherhood penalty, to me, is being removed from the opportunities to continue to succeed in your ambitions and your goals and your dreams just because of your motherhood,” Montaño said.

But she also wants to change the premise behind that conversation.

“Motherhood is a value-add,” she said.

Moderated by author, activist, runner and mother Alison Mariella Désir, the panel brought together Montaño; Strava VP of Communications and Social Impact Brian Bell; Paralympic medalist and mother Kaleo Maclay; GU President and Olympian Magdalena Boulet; and trail and ultrarunner Leah Yingling.

Their experiences were different, but the conversation repeatedly returned to one idea: Support for mothers shouldn’t depend on finding the right coach, manager, sponsor or teammate.

It should be built into the system.

From “organized chaos” to infrastructure

Long before Magdalena Boulet became president of GU, she was figuring out how to be an employee, mother and elite runner at the same time.

“I just didn’t know at the time what kind of support I should ask for,” Boulet said.

She remembers those years as “organized chaos,” balancing work, training and childcare with her husband on her way to the U.S. Olympic Trials, where she ultimately made the Olympic team.

The experience changed how she thinks about performance.

“Making the Olympic team that day really put into perspective, firsthand, how important it is to invest in the community around you and to invest in a support team in order for you to thrive,” Boulet said.

Today, she applies that perspective at GU through policies including dedicated lactation space, breast milk shipping for employees who travel, pregnancy and parental leave, pregnancy-loss bereavement and protections for sponsored athletes during pregnancy and postpartum.

For Montaño, that’s what infrastructure looks like: anticipating what mothers might need before they have to ask.

“The things that we care about are making sure that mothers are a forethought. They aren’t an afterthought,” she said.

That can mean budgeting for lactation accommodations at events, considering childcare or caregiver costs, protecting athlete contracts, and supporting physical and mental recovery postpartum.

“Make this a line item,” Montaño said.

There is no single motherhood experience

Building better systems also means recognizing that there isn’t one experience of motherhood.

Maclay began competing at 16 and went to the Rio Paralympics at 20. Six months after getting married, she became pregnant.

“I am at the very beginning of my Paralympic and athletic journey, and I am pregnant,” Maclay recalled. “I want to keep my child, and I’m excited for what this journey can be. And then the support drops off.”

She continued competing and later went to the Tokyo Paralympics while pregnant with her second son. Between her two sons, she also experienced an ectopic pregnancy and pregnancy loss.

“There is no pregnancy that is linear,” Maclay said.

Her ask to brands is straightforward: include athletes with disabilities in conversations from the beginning and ask what they need rather than assuming.

“How will this affect mothers? Also, how will this affect mothers with disabilities? How will this affect people with disabilities?” she said.

For ultrarunner Leah Yingling, that thinking needs to start even earlier.

“Showing up for mothers in sport does not start when you become a mother,” Yingling said. “I think brands in sport need to be supporting women before they become mothers.”

That means investing in communities that help more women find and stay in sport, then continuing to support them as their lives change.

Building what comes next

For Strava’s Brian Bell, supporting that change doesn’t require having lived the same experience.

“I see it. I believe you. I believe support is needed,” Bell said. “I don’t need to fully understand. I will never fully understand.”

What matters is what happens after listening.

“What I do understand is that change needs to happen,” he said. “And I’m in a position of power to help make that happen.”

The September 17 gathering culminated in the public signing of the Mother in Sport Collective pledge, bringing founding member brands together around a commitment to building more lasting support for mothers in sport.

For Montaño, the goal isn’t another one-off program. It’s to change what the industry considers standard.

“We have an opportunity to architect the future together,” she said.

And this time, mothers aren’t a miscellaneous line item. They’re part of the blueprint.

Learn more about the Mother in Sport Collective and how to get involved here: https://www.forallmothers.org/mother-in-sport-collective