No relief on work-family front--even for super-privileged professional golfers

Even professional golfers--even professional women golfers--are expected to be what Joan Williams has called "ideal workers." Read Karen Crouse's New York Times story about Cristie Kerr, age 32, here. She is the number 1 female golfer in the world, following the retirements of two other high profile women who retired to start families. An excerpt from the story follows:

For Kerr, the impediment to motherhood is golf, and there is no automatic relief. A woman’s athletic prime and her peak child-bearing years are like carbon copy pages in her reproductive calendar. A woman’s fertility peaks in her mid-20s and declines sharply after the age of 35, a real conundrum for golfers, whose games, like the courses they play, take years to mature.

Michael Whan, the LPGA Commission is quoted as saying that it's “a tough, aggressive, highly paid career path, and people struggle with what kind of competitor they want to be and what kind of mom they want to be. ... We try to make it possible to be a mom and be competitive, but we can’t make it where nobody leaves because, quite frankly, that’s personal choice.”