Supermum smash
Mark Reason questions why Serena takes baby on the road
Kim Clijsters, the winner of four Grand Slam titles and mother-ofthree, is about to make a second return to top level tennis. She’s a supermum. She’s a role model. She tells us that you can have your cake and eat it. But is anyone out there also wondering if all this cake might end up giving her children indigestion.
I can already hear a howl of outrage gathering at the back of the throats of the feministas. What’s it got to do with me? What would I, a mere man, understand about motherhood? Let’s ride this guy out of town. Let’s demonise him on social media. Let’s hang him from the nearest clothes line and pelt him with tennis balls.
Well, if we care about children, it has to do with all of us, men and women. The kids don’t have a voice. But when the Kim Clijsters and Evonne Goolagongs and Margaret Courts are doing their thing – yeah, I know, it’s an unlikely trinity of Grand Slam winning mums – the world seems to genuflect before their amazing ability to juggle two lives.
And I am not saying it is not possible. Many women have no choice and do a phenomenal job in bringing up their kids and earning an income. But the tennis tour is a bit different. It’s a truly soulless, artificial place. You are stuck in hotels in strange cities for uncertain periods of time whilst being treated like a goddess by a retinue of venal sycophants.
I don’t believe that is a healthy environment for kids. The tournaments on the WTA tour put on creches these days, but do you want your children mixing with the children of other freaks. Because most top sports people aren’t normal. They are obsessives. That’s how they got to the top. The Williamses and the Federers have played tennis all their lives.
Why else would Roger be dragging his kids round the tennis tour with him. He doesn’t need the money to raise a family any more. Isn’t it time he got a proper grown up job and spent more time at home with his family.
And this isn’t holier than thou. When my kids were young I spent far too much time covering the golf tour, far too many nights in America away from home. Yes, someone has to earn the family living, but there other nobler ways, like being a school teacher.
So it disturbed me the other day when I read Clijsters say about her imminent comeback; ‘‘After it was known what I was doing, I had older people grabbing me saying, ‘This is so exciting’ and ‘You have no idea what it means to me’...
‘‘I was at the coast with the kids and a lady ran by us. A few minutes later she comes back and says: ‘I didn’t want to bother you, but I had to say what you’re doing is such an inspiration.’’’
For me, it’s the opposite. It takes my breath away.. The wondrous thing about parenthood is it helps shift the me generation into a you generation or at least a we generation. Children teach us a hell of a lot about how beautiful the world is through innocent eyes, about trust, about unconditional love. And I am not sure that hoicking them off to Indian Wells is a good way of fostering that innocent, trusting love.
Of course we have been doing similar things for well over a hundred years. The rich Victorians decided it would be a good thing to pack young children off to boarding schools. That way mummy and daddy could still go to cocktail parties and not be bothered by the little brats.
I think it was Rupert Everett who said that the real reason for the exile from home was to cauterise the children’s souls. Nothing in life could ever be so painful again. So when Empire inflicted a few wounds, the grown ups would push on through the pain.
The other day in Auckland another supermum strode onto court for her first round match. In tones of ecclesiastical awe, the announcer said; ‘‘And now welcome our top seed, the one, the only, please welcome from the United States of America, Serena Williams.’’
Having been asked to welcome Serena twice in 10 seconds, the courtside glitterati of Auckland were not about to let the country down. They stood and cheered and took selfies and generally let Serena know how honoured they were that such a grande dame should grace little old New Zealand with her presence.
Of course Serena didn’t hear a thing. She had her phone in her left hand and was plugged in to some tunes pulsing through her earbuds. So there was not the slightest wave or smile of acknowledgement. Her coach was left to do the PR thing with a courtside interview.
Serena the tennis player was not at her best in both her opening matches. She doesn’t move anything like as well as she used to and the first fundamental of tennis is getting your feet in the right place. However good your racket head control, it don’t mean a thing, if you ain’t got that swing.
There were several sumptuous shots, on a flat searing arc, because this is the finest women’s tennis player of all time. However Serena is now 38 and by the end of her second match she was puffing. But the encouragement was there from New Zealand’s adoring fans and from hubby at courtside.
Presumably baby Olympia was OK too, because as tournament director Karl Budge said, ‘‘She has come here with a big team that can make sure life off court is taken care of.’’
And I don’t want to dis Serena. She is doing what she thinks best. She says she wants to be the best mum she can be and has taken Olympia off to the zoo already where her daughter can stare at all the freaky animals and look at lions and tigers too.
But please don’t think these sporting superstars are role models, because they tend to know a hell of a lot less about life than you and I. Their waking and sleeping thoughts have been obsessed with tennis for years and years. And when real life collides with tennis it can cause problems.
Serena Williams threw a complete strop the last time she was in Auckland, but did not apologise on her return. She turned it into a retrospective joke because she was unwittingly pregnant and couldn’t stand the smell of her husband. Ha, ha.
Serena is a great champion just as Evonne Goolagong was a great champion, the sunshine supergirl as she was known. And young Evonne had it far harder growing up than her kids. She recalled of her own childhood; ‘‘Whenever a car would come down the road, my mum would tell us to hide ‘or else the welfare man would take you away’.’’ It was a genuine fear and one that shames Australia in those years.
So I am not naive enough to pretend that the children of these sports stars don’t have a privileged upbringing compared to so many. But I am going to suggest that taking them on the road so that you can keep living out your own expiring dreams is selfish and pops the kids into an unnatural bubble.
The African proverb says it takes a village to raise a child. I don’t think they had in mind a village of flunkeys and nannies, however. They meant a village of grandmothers and friends and uncles and aunts and brothers and sisters. More and more we are losing that connection. The more we globalise, the more we grow apart.
Sanctifying the behaviour of the tennis mums and holding them up as some sort of role model is surely not the sort of ‘‘progress’’ we want to embrace. The mums who choose to stay at home and look after their kids are the ones I venerate. It’s an unbelievably hard road at times, but it is also the most beautiful journey in the world.
I am not sure that hoicking children off to Indian Wells is a good way of fostering that innocent, trusting love.