Kim Caldwell was introduced by the University of Tennessee as the new head coach of the women’s basketball team April 7, 2024.
Long before Caitlin Clark’s extraordinary shooting and passing abilities brought unprecedented exposure to women’s college basketball, the UT Lady Vols set the standard for excellence. Under longtime coach Pat Summit, the Lady Vols won eight NCAA championships between 1987 and 2008. The Tennessee job, then, was a big promotion for Caldwell, who had been rising through the ranks at lower-profile schools.
Laura Stephens-Reed
But Caldwell had an announcement of her own on Sept. 3, 2024: She was pregnant with her first child, who would be due mid-season. At a preseason media day, she shared, “I spent a really long time, I think maybe the first three months of my pregnancy, being really worried about it.”
That’s no surprise. Many women of child-bearing age struggle with the timing of expanding their families. This is especially true for those in or seeking leadership positions. The pernicious perception persists that these women are not as reliable or available for their paid responsibilities because they might — God forbid — need to heal from giving birth or take time off to care for tiny humans.
The “As a mom, will I be taken seriously as a leader?” concern has been the focus of many coaching conversations I’ve had with clergywomen. Women in ministry are regularly critiqued for bringing children to work, leaving work to pick up a sick kid or to attend a child’s event, limiting evening meetings so they can manage bedtime routines, and more. Meanwhile, clergywomen expecting or hoping to have a baby spend sleepless nights wondering when to disclose a pregnancy while in or searching for a call. These women bear the heavy weight of others’ (and their own) assumptions and expectations placed on their personal and professional roles.
Fortunately, the University of Tennessee did take its new coach seriously, which paid off as the Lady Vols got off to a hot start this season. Coach Caldwell celebrated the arrival of her baby boy on Jan. 20. She was back on the sideline exactly one week later.
“These questions of timing are and should be up to each individual mother.”
I cannot overstate what deep reserves of physical and mental capacity this quick turnaround must have required, especially considering that Caldwell also was battling the flu when she delivered. (I was still winded from walking the length of my house and unsure what day or time it was for much longer than seven days after having my son.) Yet Caldwell paced for two hours and coached a near-upset of the nation’s second-ranked team upon her return.
Initially, my reaction was, “Oh no.” I worried observers would look to her superhuman feat as the norm. “Why do you need (insert length of parental leave) weeks to come back to work? Kim Caldwell was ready after a week.” (Let me be clear: I do not believe Caldwell intended to set an untenable standard for others.) Here in the U.S. — including in the church — women are still having to fight for a few measly weeks of paid leave while the rest of the industrialized world is much more generous with new parents, and that battle is likely to get even harder under the current administration.
I am not privy to Caldwell’s thought process about coming back to work immediately. I also have no interest in questioning it, because these questions of timing are and should be up to each individual mother. I simply hope Caldwell returned because she felt ready and had all the tangible and intangible support she and her husband and son needed, not because she felt pressure from UT or fans as the Lady Vols started to struggle in conference play.
So here are the conversations I hope Caldwell’s situation will generate instead:
- I hope workplaces, including churches, will realize that leading and mothering are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they can strengthen one another.
- I hope workplaces, including churches, will celebrate the strength that bearing and raising children both takes and builds in a mom.
- I hope workplaces, including churches, will ask expectant parents what they need to make it possible to show up the way they want at home and at work, then do their part to make that possible.
- I hope those who desire to be parents plan their families (to the extent they are in control of that timing) around what is best for them and their hoped-for child, not around a workplace’s demands.
- And I hope new parents will know they are not alone but have important sources of community and support they can utilize.
We talk a lot as a culture about wanting leaders who have family values. But to view parenting in the ways named above — this is what it would actually look like to value family and all its members, and the result would be a healthier and better-connected church and society.
Laura Stephens-Reed has been in ministry 20 years, serving in a variety of roles and contexts. Her ministry now consists of coaching clergy and congregations through all kinds of transitions with faithfulness and curiosity. She is based in Northport, Ala., but she works with pastors and churches all over North America and across 17 denominations.