Serena Williams’s retirement is no fairytale – it’s a heartbreaking choice between family and career
Megan Maurice
The tennis great’s decision is a stark reminder that even in 2022, women’s time is still not our own
Everyone has to make them, all the time. It is not possible to have it all. Deciding to spend the time doing the one thing is not consistent with being able to spend that same time doing the other thing. That’s just how it all works.
Of course, economists have a phrase for this – opportunity costs. But as with so much economics that’s just the codification – jargonisation perhaps – of something everyone with even a little wit already knows. Live is about choices. Tough.
I think the term is “writing cheques the body can’t cash.”
Not even a choice of whether to pack it in, but only of when. And totally inconsequential to anybody else.
Growing old is not a choice.
Won’t SOMEBODY please think of the 40 year old multi-millionaire celebrity athletes??!?
She’s 40. If women’s tennis was more competitive, she’d have had to retire years ago, but I can understand that the prospect of making large sums by trouncing fat birds would keep her going.
…it’s a heartbreaking choice between family and career
Let that phrase marinate in the brain for a bit. Having a family is a ‘heartbreaking’ choice for women with a career. And unfortunately, she has a family, so she’s experienced this heartbreak herself.
Woman like Megan Maurice scare the shit out of me. Not because they exist, but because they procreate.
It’s not a career any more because she couldn’t (well, not sensibly) spend all the money she’s earned by now in a hundred years. Playing championship tennis is something she wants to do for glory, self-esteem, whatever … but not for the money any more.
I cannot see that her choice of family is heart-breaking – she’s had a career at the top of the world and now she’s doing something else. Good luck to her!
Competative sports person hits 40 and complains they’re not 18 any more.
I hope she’s got a back-up career available, you use your time-limited sports career to prepare for moving on. When I worra lad the local footie club paid to put its players through collage to get them proper qualifications before they were worn out at 30. Chap down the road from me became a well respected motor mechanic.
The clickbait headline in The Times was: ‘If I were a guy, I would carry on’ (in quotes, so presumably not the invention of a sub). They’ve had to close the comments because so many people were pointing out that (a) she wouldn’t be in the top 1,000 as a guy, and (b) she gets paid 50% more per hour than blokes (who have to work much harder on court, too); so she should bloody well shut up.
She should try cakeism.
‘I cannot see that her choice of family is heart-breaking – she’s had a career at the top of the world and now she’s doing something else. Good luck to her!’
I can only agree, john77.
We all wear out, we all only have so much time. How she uses what she’s got is her business and her problem.