Bio-psycho-political subjectivation: motherhood as rupture, resistance and re-becoming in Chinese elite sport

Elite athlete mothers are often positioned within competing cultural narratives: motherhood is framed as incompatible with high-performance sport, yet successful return-to-sport stories are frequently celebrated through ideals of the sporting ‘supermom’. This paper explores how motherhood is experienced by three Chinese Olympic medallists who returned to elite competition following childbirth within the Juguo Tizhi (Whole Nation System). Drawing on a feminist Foucauldian framework and narrative analysis, the paper examines how athlete-mother subjectivities are negotiated through disciplinary power, affective governance and technologies of the self within China’s state-sponsored sport system. The findings suggest that the maternal body becomes a site of bio-psycho-political tension, where postpartum embodiment, caregiving responsibilities and elite sporting demands converge. Participants’ narratives revealed how feelings of kuiqian (guilt and indebtedness) operated as a form of affective governance, transforming maternal separation and sacrifice into powerful motivations for continued athletic achievement. Simultaneously, motherhood functioned as a rupture that enabled athletes to renegotiate their relationships with sport, family and self, giving rise to processes of re-becoming and renewed forms of agency within, rather than outside, institutional power relations. The paper offers a culturally situated account of athlete motherhood and illustrates how maternal agency is continuously negotiated within a highly institutionalised sporting environment.