The NWSL has a record number of active mothers rostered, 28, this season. The figure represents a shift in support and understanding around pregnancy, postpartum and parenting. The Athletic explores these topics and more in a series devoted to motherhood and soccer.It felt like football had taken a leap forward when Tanya Oxtoby took maternity leave five years ago, halfway through a season.Oxtoby, then manager of Bristol City Women in the Women’s Super League (WSL), took the break two months before her son was born. The club appointed the late Matt Beard as her maternity cover — the first time in the modern era of the women’s game in England that a coach has been hired to fill in during maternity leave for a substantial spell.City were hailed as revolutionaries. But Oxtoby’s experience wasn’t what it appeared at the time.“I think it was a lot of the unknown for everybody,” Oxtoby told The Athletic of the club’s reaction to her pregnancy. “A lot that I’ll keep private because I’ve got a lot of respect for the club and a lot of respect for the people that work there. But it certainly wasn’t an easy conversation or an easy process with the people that were there, who are no longer there.“You can read between the lines from that point of view, that it was difficult … I very much preempted the conversation with the right people: my position, where I was going to be, what my intentions were and what that looked like. The response was probably not as positive as what I would have liked it to have been. It was really difficult.”Tanya Oxtoby was the manager of Bristol City from 2018 to 2021. (Alex Davidson / Getty Images)Publicly, she “delivered the right party line, if you like, because it was the right thing to do for the players” and remained silent about what had happened behind the scenes to minimize disruption for Beard, of whom she only speaks highly. “He very much made me feel a part of it,” she said, “and I’ll be forever grateful for that.” “Given the process that happened at Bristol with the maternity stuff, I didn’t even know if I really enjoyed football anymore,” she said, reflecting on her feelings at the time. “I think there’s been a lot of development around the way clubs deal with things like that.”Football management and parenthood have not always been easy bedfellows — especially motherhood, given that across society women tend to undertake far more cognitive and emotional labor domestically than men.The stakes are particularly complex in the increasingly professionalized women’s game, where smaller budgets and less backroom staff place greater demands on all managers. Industries are still working out how to talk about parenthood and its reality. Consider the exhaustion that Emma Hayes, for example, wore in her final season at Chelsea. “If you’re a parent, forget about it,” she said, in her final press conference, “unless we have an openness and a willingness to consider different things.”Oxtoby said Bristol City’s handling of her pregnancy was the main reason she parted ways with the club in August 2021. “I’m driven a lot by morals and values,” she explained. “I felt like that didn’t align anymore. That decision was an easy one in knowing that it was the right thing to do, but [it was] really, really hard to walk away because I poured my blood, sweat and tears into that club.”But the balance isn’t impossible. Cultural change and greater resources are needed to retain those coaches, and it begins with a willingness to listen to their experiences: the challenges, but also the personal, social and emotional development that motherhood brings — and the benefit that has for the game.At times, the relatively few mothers working in elite football are left feeling bruised.The Canada WNT manager Casey Stoney recalls her June 2024 sacking from NWSL side San Diego Wave after a seven-game winless run. Stoney said she and her family had flown home to the UK following a family bereavement and learned the news via her agent upon landing. The family’s visas were terminated immediately.