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Macaela MacKenzie is the author of “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Money-Power-Respect-Shaping-Feminism/dp/1541600894/" target="_blank">Money, Power, Respect: How Women In Sports Are Shaping the Future of Feminism</a>.”

Whether the U.S. women’s national soccer team continues to dominate the sport with a third-consecutive World Cup victory this summer, it’s already distinguished by a rare phenomenon on elite sport rosters: moms.

That story serves as a valuable case study for what can happen when employers start treating moms as assets rather than annoyances.

American companies are notoriously bad at supporting working moms. For most of their history, professional sports have been a particularly hostile workplace. Not for fathers. Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods — all professionals, all dads. But their fatherhood is a footnote, if it’s mentioned at all, in discussions of their performance at work.

“I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family,” tennis legend <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/serena-williams-retirement-in-her-own-words" target=_blank>Serena Williams wrote</a> when she announced her retirement in 2022. “If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family.”

Against that backdrop, what’s happening in soccer as the U.S. women defend their World Cup title in Australia and New Zealand looks even more remarkable. A <a href="https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2023/03/andonovski-names-26player-roster-for-biosteel-training-camp-ahead-of-april-friendlies-vs-ireland" target="_blank">record number of moms</a> were in training camps this spring, with Alex Morgan, Crystal Dunn and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/07/20/julie-ertz-uswnt-return-baby-world-cup-soccer/" target="_blank">Julie Ertz </a>making it onto the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/interactive/2023/uswnt-womens-world-cup-roster-2023-lineup/" target="_blank">final World Cup roster</a>, tying the record set by the 2015 World Cup team.

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Steph Chambers

Pregnant professional athletes pose a particularly complex challenge for their employers. A nurse or a lawyer could theoretically work until the moment her water breaks, take four weeks of postpartum leave and be considered lucky. (As it stands, <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oiGc9I-gWWXTH5uIC3pS9VU75g91dieK/view?pli=1" target="_blank">1 in 4</a> working moms in the United States return to work within 10 days.) At minimum, many athletes need six months away from competition, considering most <a href="https://www.webmd.com/baby/exercise-during-pregnancy" target="_blank">doctors advise against</a> participation in contact sports after the first trimester.

Real support that can prevent a mass loss of talent means funding a robust paid-leave policy, resources to support the return to competition and ongoing child-care benefits.

U.S. Soccer — Morgan, Ertz and Dunn’s employer — is an unexpected leader in this arena.

The <a href="https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2022/05/ussf-womens-and-mens-national-team-unions-agree-to-historic-collective-bargaining-agreements" target="_blank">historic equal-pay deal</a> signed by U.S. Soccer and its men’s and women’s players last year expanded on a solid foundation of support the federation had developed since <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/sports/uswnt-equal-pay-fight/" target="_blank">1999 in response to pressure from players</a>. Prior to that, pregnancy was treated like a career-ending injury. Today, U.S. Soccer offers six months of paid parental leave <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/11/14/walker-zimmerman-usmnt-world-cup/" target="_blank">to all national team parents</a>, including adoptive parents, and benefits such as fully funded child-care during training camps and competitions that most working parents should have but currently only dream of.

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“[The women’s national team] has something that other [soccer] players just don’t,” said Becca Roux, executive director for the U.S. Women’s National Team Players Association: paid-leave and child-care benefits.

For Jessica McDonald, the only U.S. mom during the 2019 Women’s World Cup, training with the national team was the only time in her career she’d gotten that kind of support.

“That part of it was really emotional,” McDonald told me for my book.

This kind of success shouldn’t stop at sports.

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“If we can demonstrate how sports can change to better support working caregivers — with the unique aspect that professional athletes use their bodies for their jobs — it is easy for a Fortune 500 company to see how they can build supportive infrastructure for caregivers,” Alysia Montaño, an Olympian and seven-time national champion runner who <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/opinion/nike-maternity-leave.html" target=_blank>called out</a> the lack of maternity protections in sponsorship contracts in 2019, said in an email.

The United States remains <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/upshot/paid-leave-democrats.html" target="_blank">one of only six countries</a> in the world without a federal paid-leave program. But even when policies do change, it doesn’t mean the culture changes. It has been illegal in the United States to pay women less than men in the <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/equal-pay-act-1963" target="_blank">same job for 60 years</a>, yet there’s still a<a href="https://www.epi.org/blog/gender-wage-gap-widens-even-as-low-wage-workers-see-strong-gains-women-are-paid-roughly-22-less-than-men-on-average/" target="_blank"> gender pay gap</a>. It has been illegal to fire a woman for becoming pregnant <a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/pregnancy-discrimination-act-1978#:~:text=The%20Pregnancy%20Discrimination%20Act%20of%201978%20%7C%20U.S.%20Equal%20Employment%20Opportunity%20Commission" target="_blank">since the 1970s</a>, yet women are still <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/famee.pdf" target="_blank">forced out of the workplace</a> by a system that continues to <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/child-care-crisis-keeping-women-workforce/" target="_blank">penalize working moms</a>, not dads, to the detriment of the entire economy. And nearly half of U.S. businesses plan to cut child-care benefits, and 28 percent planned to reduce paid-leave programs in 2023, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/parental-leave-child-care-benefits-face-cuts-as-recession-looms?srnd=economics-v2" target="_blank">according to a survey</a> conducted by Care.com in December.

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That’s why we need to fundamentally alter perceptions about what the postpartum body is capable of and challenge the assumption that becoming a caregiver at home decreases a woman’s value at work. U.S. Soccer proves to other industries that it’s possible. But perhaps even more important than serving as a blueprint for how to support working parents, the presence of so many high-profile moms at the World Cup can remind employers why they should.

“This is for U.S. Soccer’s benefit as a program that wants to continue to be the best in the world,” Roux said. “Think of the loss of talent, among this group and for the past couple of decades, [without this support].” U.S. Soccer officials don’t have a cheat code — they simply recognize that they’re better off when they don’t count moms out.

When Morgan, Dunn and Ertz take the field, their skill will be the story. But their motherhood shouldn’t be a footnote.

“The more we can demonstrate how female athletes can thrive in both their careers and motherhood,” champion runner Montaño said, “the better we will be able to show other industries how it can be done.”

Macaela MacKenzie

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U.S. Soccer's support for moms should be a model

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Opinion U.S. Soccer supports working moms. Are you watching, America?