I love sports. I love the thrill of last-minute interception, a diving catch in the outfield, an overtime goal to win the game. And I especially love the Olympic Games, which are starting up in Beijing next month. This year, I’m really looking forward to watching the Games, and I’ve got my eye on two elite female athletes who are competing to qualify - Dara Torres and Lindsey Davenport - mom athletes opting back into their careers after having children.

Ms. Torres, a 41-year-old mom and swimmer is racing this week to qualify for her fifth Olympic Games - a record for any athlete. At her age it’s almost unheard of to be swimming for an Olympic berth, not to mention handily beating her competition who’s some 15 years younger. I had heard a bit anecdotally about how unique her efforts to make the Games are. However, after reading this article about her, I was floored. Her method for preparing for racing is nothing short of intense:

… her two stretchers work in tandem to contort and flex her body, in a 20-minute preswim version of the two-hour sequence they do three times a week at her home.

In addition to that, she gets stretched five times a day and receives professional massages. This is all at a high cost:

Torres’s routine includes a head coach, a sprint coach, a strength coach, two stretchers, two masseuses, a chiropractor and a nanny, at the cost of at least $100,000 per year.

At first, when I read through these facts, I thought, is opting back in worth all that pain and money? I can’t imagine spending the time and effort to go back to a career in which I already achieved the ultimate success. But in thinking about it further, I think Torres is a role model for any of us who want to get back into our game - swimming or otherwise.

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The basis for tome’s like Linda Hirshman‘s Get To Work and Lisa Bennett’s Feminine Mistake may appear to be nothing more than telling women what to do but if you can ignore the horrible presentation, the real issue is that Hirshman, Bennett and others are seriously tired of seeing women make up the majority of those living in poverty. Not just making up a large percentage, but that women end up there because we take time out of work to care for our family members.

* Women comprise 56% of Americans over 18 who live in poverty. [cite]
* In 2004, 28.4 percent of households headed by single women were poor. [cite]
* Nearly two-thirds of white women who are poor in old age have not been poor in the earlier years. This demonstrates an increased risk or a newly emerging risk of poverty for many white women. [cite]
* Old age poverty for African-American women reflects economic disadvantages in their earlier years compared with white women. [cite]
* In the United States, the share of elderly women living in poverty is highest among divorced or separated women (37 percent), followed by widowed women (28 percent), never-married women (22 percent), and married women (10 percent). [cite]

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