Exploring the stress of olympic postponement due to COVID-19 on elite/international and world-class parenting and pregnant runners.

The primary objective of this community-based participatory research is to explore the impacts of COVID-19 and the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games on world-class and elite/international-class parenting and pregnant athletes. Participants in this study include 11 female and 10 male parenting and/or pregnant middle and distance runners. Combined, the participants have competed at 26 Olympic Games and 31 World Championships. Drawing on the general concepts of stressors and psychological resilience, we use thematic analysis to develop four themes to understand the stressors for world-class and elite/international-class parenting and pregnant athletes due to COVID-19 and the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games: (1) lack of childcare support, (2) family planning, and (3) needing to stay away from sources of COVID-including their children. Despite the stressors identified in the aforementioned themes, we identified a fourth theme: (4) participants demonstrated adaptability to stress in spite of-or due to-their athlete-parent identities.

Single women's leisure during the Coronavirus pandemic

The novel coronavirus has resulted in self-isolation and physical distancing for millions of people. In this critical commentary, we analyze the effects of these practices on our leisure as two single, professional, childless women who live alone. Women face societal expectations that they will play large roles in caregiving. We argue that in the current pandemic, women who are not responsible for the provision of care may face amplified resentment or belittlement for engaging in regular leisure activities. Further, many people have been limited in interacting with those outside of their household. For those who live alone, this is particularly isolating and has a huge effect on the types of leisure in which they can engage and removes them from their established networks of support and safety. We show that removal from our social and care networks can result in feelings of selfishness, shame, and fear during leisure participation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)