It’s a well-known fact that if you are having a child in America, you’re effectively on your own once that kid is out in the world. There’s very little social welfare for parents in the United States, and what little there is depends heavily on your employment. That’s right – it’s not your mere existence that guarantees you healthcare and child care, it’s where you work and often how much you work.
When Sara Carver Milne, now the associate head coach at Auburn, was named the head coach for Brown at age 25, she was not even a 12-month employee of the Ivy League university. Neither was her assistant coach. “They didn’t pay me in the summer,” Carver Milne said. “But if I didn’t work in the summer, we wouldn’t get the recruits.”
Carver Milne and her husband, Stew, a freelance photographer, planned to have their children in the summer. They had two boys, Aiden and Camden, now 20 and 18, both born in June.
“You’re always afraid you’re going to be behind,” Carver Milne said. At the time, at Brown, she added, “it [concerned me] that the program would fail” if she didn’t put in the effort.
Carver Milne’s husband did not take assignments when his wife had practice. Carver Milne did everything when he did work. “It was tricky,” she said. “It wasn’t conventional.” She noted infant care often changes day to day; for her and her husband, she said, “it was hour to hour.”
Unlike in nearly every other developed nation, paid parental leave is hardly guaranteed in the U.S. According to data compiled in 2019 and reported by the Pew Research Center, the U.S. ranks dead last among 41 countries for the amount of government-mandated paid parental leave it offers citizens (which is zero. Zero weeks and zero dollars).
A 2018 study of economists in the U.S. found that even the best-intentioned maternity leave policies at colleges and universities leave women at a disadvantage for professional advancement.
Of the schools included in the researchers’ data that also have women’s gymnastics teams, Cal provides the most paid parental leave to its employees, offering 32 weeks to women who give birth and 16 weeks to partners. UCLA offers 22 weeks of paid parental leave to women who give birth and 11 weeks to partners. Penn State offers 17 weeks of paid parental leave to women who give birth, but just two to partners. The average paid leave for women at all universities in the study was just over eight weeks, while for partners it was just over six.
The lack of consistency around parental leave policy in the U.S. means that female coaches, particularly in low-revenue sports like gymnastics, can become targets when they are pregnant.
In 2021, former Towson head coach Vicki May sued the university for pregnancy and gender discrimination, alleging that during her high-risk pregnancy, she was prevented from making phone calls during gymnastics practices and had to clear doctor’s appointments with her supervisor; she alleges that she was the only Towson coach at the time subject to such restrictions. May was fired by Towson in May 2021 and replaced by Jay Ramirez, who came to the position with fewer qualifications than May but was paid a higher salary when he was hired than May made at the time she was fired.
Gymnastics coaches are often the only people with their specific set of skills. And many will often forgo benefits accessible to them because they know they cannot easily be replaced. But if you don’t take enough time, you might be hampering your own recovery, whether from giving birth or supporting a partner who has.
Carver Milne acknowledges that some coaches are more family-focused, and some thrive on being present at the office. But, she added, “It’s just not the nature of a competitive sport” to encourage time off. “That’s not necessarily coming from the employer,” she said. “That’s just the competitive spirit inside every coach.”
Cécile Canqueteau-Landi, now Georgia’s co-head coach, told the Olympic Channel in 2023 that she worked up until the day before she gave birth to her daughter, Juliette, who is now 17, and took just three or four days away from coaching afterward. Landi had maternity leave to take but chose against taking it. “I did have a choice because I know I would have been paid, but I also didn’t have one,” Landi told reporter Scott Bregman, adding that she did not know who would work with her athletes if she was away.
In a full-circle moment, Juliette Landi will attend Auburn next year as a diver, and Carver Milne was able to connect with both Cecile and Juliette Landi on Juliette’s official visit to the school recently.
Carver Milne said that it is important for her to set an example for young mothers entering coaching and for the women she mentors because that example was not there for her. “Rather than being resentful of that, I look at it the opposite way — I wasn’t offered that opportunity, and it would have made me a lot happier and a lot more productive, so I think that’s important to provide that to my employees.”
Carver Milne said that she is pleased that her former assistant at Brown, who also works as a leotard representative for GK Elite, was able to take two months off for maternity leave. The climate is changing, she said, but, she said, it still often comes down to that competitive spirit. “If you’re passionate about gymnastics, you’ll make it work.”
In 2007, Carver Milne had a newborn and a 2-year-old. Her assistant coach had just informed her that he was leaving to start his own gym. And world champion Alicia Sacramone was headed to Brown as a freshman and one of the first big names to compete in elite gymnastics and NCAA simultaneously. “It was one of the bigger challenges of my life,” she said. In the moment, she said, she thought about how she would counsel her athletes in a similarly stressful situation.
And ultimately, she said, “We made it all work.”
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Article by Lela Moore