How Motherhood Transformed Tennis Great Naomi Osaka

As a tennis former world number one, four-time Grand Slam winner, and one of the highest paid women in sports, Naomi Osaka is used to having her moves documented—be it in her training sessions, which she films and often shares on her social media accounts, her matches, or press interviews.

She didn’t quite anticipate the delivery of her daughter, Shai, in July 2023, being one of them. But as it turned out, Osaka’s mother voice-recorded her childbirth—capturing “the moment Shai came into the world,” Naomi says, recalling the unexpected, though not unwelcome, memento.

It’s an intimate anecdote for someone as famously private as Osaka to share. But it gives an insight into her world: For all the hugeness of her career achievements, for all the trophies she’s won and the businesses she now heads up (talent agency Evolve, creative media company Hana Kuma, and skin care brand Kinlò), family comes first. The birth of Shai was marked by three generations of Osaka women side by side.

Motherhood, Osaka says, has profoundly transformed her. Yes, there was pain—her childbirth and postpartum was hard. Yes, her daily life now has a competing focus: “My world turned into a completely different world in one night.” And yes, she had to relearn herself: “I can put my foot down a lot more now.” But as she healed and put herself back together (“it was a really long process”), the Naomi that came out the other side was more powerful and more whole than ever.

“I feel so strong,” she says. “People talk about childbirth, but it’s different once you experience it. I just feel like I can do anything and nothing will bother me, and the pain tolerance has definitely increased a lot from that. I just don’t really care about other people’s opinions anymore.”

To hear Osaka speak about the outsize impact becoming a parent has had on her makes it feel like her superpower. In her universe mothers are driven, stronger for the challenges they have survived. They are none of the negative stereotypes that sometimes follow women around postpartum or into the workplace. They can put a child at the center of their world and yet still be a world-class champion.

Osaka is about to put that theory to the test. On January 14 she will return to play the Australian Open for the first time since 2022 (she won it in 2019 and 2021). And she rang in the New Year on January 1 with a victory in her first elite tennis match back from maternity leave. While she lost her second, the tennis great isn’t deterred.

Naomi Osaka at the Brisbane International on the day of her first match postpartum, January 1, 2024.

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“I’ve trained so hard since giving birth, I need to enjoy these moments,” she said in an interview after her loss. “I feel sad, but the sadness is me being like, ‘Aww, I wish I could have done better, because I know I’m spending so much time away from her [Shai], so I want it to be worth it somehow.’”

This newfound confidence, and perhaps even happiness, on and off court is a marked departure for Osaka. It’s no secret that she has battled severe mental health challenges over the years. In 2021 she shared that she had suffered “long bouts of depression since the US Open in 2018,” and struggled with giving interviews because of her introversion and anxiety around public speaking. But today very little is off-limits. “I’m pretty open,” she answers when I somewhat hesitatingly ask a question about her experiences with postpartum, before going on to share how shocked she was that “having a baby completely destroys your pelvic floor.” And she acknowledges there has been a shift within her: a finding of her voice—albeit one that is still hauntingly soft but increasingly purposeful.

“It’s weird because I’ve lived most of my life, I guess, listening to my parents or always feeling the pressure of wanting to make them proud or make other people proud,” she reflects. “And I don’t know when it happened, but I just started wanting to do things for myself. It’s a growing-up moment. Even from last year to this year, I feel like a completely different person. Just finding my voice and knowing what I want to stand for, and knowing the things that are important to me is something that I’ve had to learn throughout the years.”

Naomi Osaka is advocating for paid leave for all.Bobbie

In 2024, Osaka is standing up for new parents. More specifically, in a new ad campaign for infant formula brand Bobbie, she is calling for the passing of paid family and medical leave in America. The US is one of only six countries in the entire world without a national paid parental leave policy, 73% of Americans don’t have paid leave through their jobs, and one in four women have returned to work within two weeks of giving birth because of the lack of it. Glamour and Paid Leave for All have joined forces to urge Congress to pass it, and Bobbie’s ad campaign is also supporting our petition. Osaka and Bobbie are also introducing 50 cash grants for 50 families to provide interim support while advocating for federal paid leave.

“When I heard the stats, I was really shocked,” Osaka tells me. “I’m lucky enough to not have to go straight into work, but I really needed that time to process everything that’s happened and, of course, get to know my baby. And to see that there are so many women that don’t have that choice and they have to immediately go straight to work is really sad.”

Osaka is well aware of the privilege she has when it comes to making choices. The choice she made, for example, not to breastfeed Shai. “I watched Serena’s documentary, and I saw her pumping before she went onto the court to play a match,” she recalls. “I was thinking to myself, This might not be the path for me.” (Her partnership with formula brand Bobbie “came about organically,” because she started using it to feed her daughter.)

Second, the choice she made to start training again 15 days after giving birth. She didn’t consider it work, because she was not back on the punishing elite tennis circuit (her training was a continuation of a physical routine she’s had for nearly two decades), but the opprobrium rained down on her anyway. “Honestly, I didn’t know that people were going to create a big deal about me training so quickly,” she says. “I find it wild because I’ve been physically training since I was seven years old. So, for me, it’s so natural.”

Finally, perhaps her most significant choice of all: blocking out the critics and “not caring about people’s opinions.” Parenthood, Osaka explains, has given her that. “Moms are expected to do everything and to know everything. But I’ve learned that I can put my foot down a lot more now, and I’ve also learned why a lot of moms are very loud and they have strong characters.”

Osaka photographed in Australia earlier this month.

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Still, her postpartum was hard. And while she did return to training early, it was also necessary. We talk about an elephant in the room, a subject that can often be deeply embarrassing to address, but which Osaka is refreshingly open about: what happens to women and their pelvic floors postbirth. Yes, even four-time Grand Slam tennis champions.

“Having a baby completely destroys your pelvic floor,” Osaka says. “I was shocked, because I couldn’t get up out of my bed. I had to roll sideways, and it was a really long process because, for me, my immediate way of thinking is: To rebuild this I have to do a lot of sit-ups. And I learned that that’s totally not what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to do deep pelvic-floor work.

“I did have a really great team around me that gave me a lot of information,” she acknowledges. But, she notes, “I feel like that’s something that not a lot of people have access to.”

Given where she is now, with all the knowledge she has accumulated about her body, her recovery, and caring for a newborn, I ask whether, when she was embarking on her pregnancy, she was nervous—not just about birth but about her career. After all, it was less than five years ago when Olympian Allyson Felix revealed that her then sponsor Nike wanted to pay her 70% less when she wanted to combine her career with starting a family. (Nike responded to the public outcry by announcing a new maternity policy for their sponsored athletes.)

“I was extremely nervous,” Osaka admits. “I felt like I was stepping into the unknown, and I also felt like the last few years of my career were kind of sporadic too. So I didn’t even know if my sponsors wanted to take up the energy to go through this with me. But I’m really happy that I chose people around me that understand me and we’re going through this adventure together. I guess the biggest elephant in the room is Nike, but they’ve been so extremely helpful.”

In a touching full-circle moment, Felix, whose outspoken testimony paved the way for sporting mothers in her wake, became a key support from Osaka during her maternity leave, calling her for “random checkups because she knew what I was going through. It was really nice to be thought about.”

As Osaka prepares to step on court in Melbourne in just a few days to try to reclaim an Australian Open title, Naomi Osaka the tennis champion and Naomi Osaka the mother are the dual identities she’ll be wearing. It’s a change she’s still grappling with. “It seems so far apart from being a mom when I walk on the court,” she says. “I’ve been playing tennis since I was three, so that’s something that is as normal as breathing for me.” But at the same time: “I often worry about if I’m a good mom, but at the end of the day, I realize Shai is my daughter. There’s nothing I could do or I want to do that’s going to change that, and I just want to be a good role model for her and I want her to be proud of me.”