Creative non-fiction stories about parenthood in Finnish sport: care ethics and reproductive justice

Recent qualitative research has challenged the long-held assumption that motherhood and high-performance sport are incompatible, highlighting the complex and sometimes empowering experiences of athlete-mothers. However, much of this work has focused on individual experiences, paying less attention to the relational and structural conditions through which motherhood is made possible, constrained or rendered invisible in elite sports systems. In this paper, we use the concepts of care ethics and reproductive justice to examine how motherhood is experienced and negotiated in the daily practices of elite and competitive sports. We conducted life-story interviews (N = 18) with nine Finnish sport practitioners in athlete, coaching, and leadership roles to understand how an ethics of care is narratively constructed in relation to parenting decisions and experiences and what this reveals about reproductive justice. Applying narrative inquiry and creative non-fiction (CNF) portraiture, we created three portraits, each showing different approaches to care and aspects of reproductive justice. The CNF stories highlight the conditions necessary for reproductive justice and show how a deficit of care steers some people away from parenthood while creating stress and ethical strain for parents competing in sport. By exposing how deficits of care generate reproductive injustice and moral dilemmas for parents in sport, this study reframes parenting as a relational, institutional, and political issue rather than a matter of individual choice. We argue that reproductive justice provides a critical lens for understanding how sporting cultures, governance structures, and relationships shape the possibilities for having children, caring for them, and remaining in sport.