It’s an amazing comeback story for the 26-year-old who retired a few years ago to become a wife and mom, and who credits her husband, Antwerp Giants basketball player Brian Lynch, for giving her support.
While Clijsters was swinging her way to the top, another tennis mom has been making her comeback, too — Sybille Bammer, a 29-year-old Austrian who lives with her boyfriend, Christophe Gschwendtner, father of their 8-year-old daughter, Tina.
Bammer, who lost her record-breaking run at the U.S. Open in the quarterfinals, also credits her partner for supporting her. And, boy, did he; It was Gschwendtner’s idea that Bammer, then 21, get back to playing tennis after giving birth, and to make it easier for her, he gave up his career as a manufacturing engineer for five years to be Mr. Mom.
Now that Bammer’s back on the tennis and sponsorship track again and Tina’s in school full time, Gschwendtner has returned to work — he started his own electrician’s business — and the jokes from his friends about his decision to stay home have stopped. “Now my life is more interesting. It’s like I have two lives,” he told the New York Times.
His life is more interesting? As a mom who’s been a SAHM and is now a full-time employed divorced mom, I find his statement interesting. Is Gschwendtner saying that staying at home and caring for a child is uninteresting, or that the parent staying at home becomes uninteresting? Or both?
Is Gschwendtner slamming the stay-at-home parenting world?
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Vicki Larson contributes to Around the Watercooler at Mommy Track'd. She is a journalist and single mom who also writes at The OMG Chronicles.
