How Serena Williams rewrote the playbook for female athletes juggling motherhood and sport, an interview with the great woman by Amy Argetsinger
The most famous tennis player in the world, Serena Williams, is in her fourth season in her top-ranked sport. And Williams has been a remarkable athlete.
In an interview with Amy Argetsinger last month, Williams discussed how she and her sister, Venus, managed to juggle family, sports and career without succumbing to burnout, depression or the fear of becoming a “failure” in the public eye for being “too much of a mom.”
“[In our house] nobody questions her, and her children are accepted into everything that they do,” Williams told Argetsinger, “so, nobody ever really tells her that she can’t do this or she can’t do that.”
Argetsinger asked Williams how she managed to handle the stress of professional and personal life.
Williams said that she uses a “hierarchy” to make decisions, just as people do in everyday life. To do that, she looks for a level of decision that is “just right,” and then she “compares” what she wants in the future to what she is currently doing. And then she decides.
“I think the process of doing things, the way I work, is what got me to do what I do,” Williams said. “And that’s what gets me to my success. I’m not going to pretend to know everything, but I’m confident I know what I need to do.”
In the last couple of years, Williams has been one of the most visible proponents of gender equality in sports. That’s in part because she has been outspoken on other issues.
It started well before the 2010 U.S. Open — in an interview with a local newspaper in 2012.
The headline on the article she wrote about that interview in the San Diego Tribune said, “Serena Williams: Women need to step up, but we can’t give birth to our own