Making your club family friendly
Stewartry RFC recently announced their Family Pledge. It includes a freeze on memberships during pregancy and a gym with baby friendly hours. Find out more including tips for your own club.
I’m Lauren Nicholson, the Director of Women & Girls Rugby at Stewartry RFC, and a current player at Stewartry Sirens (Stewartrys Womens team in the Scottish Premiership).
I had my first baby in 2022. I felt a bit lost and wasn't really sure how to get back into sport being in what felt like a new body.
I watched Abbie Wards documentary "A Bump in the Road" and saw the amount of support she got from her club.
I thought: ‘wow I wish we had that at grassroots level’. So I started looking into it.
We had a few long-standing players not return to rugby after having children. When speaking to them, they said it was mainly due to not knowing how to physically return.
Everyone's experience of birth and parenthood is completely different, so I reached out to other mums to understand what they felt could be done better.
The feedback was fantastic and gave me lots to incorporate into the pledge.
What is the pledge?
Our Family Pledge offers peace of mind, inclusivity, physical and mental support. It has two parts to it. The first is aimed at female rugby players. The second is to support families at our club by making it a more inclusive and family friendly place with a child friendly gym hours/gym play pen and the family room.
There are some quick wins in there that are easy for any club to start and free of charge such as: having a group chat and offering alternative playing roles. Depending on the size of your club house having a private breastfeeding room could also be a quick win.
We also offer a freeze on memberships for expecting mums while on maternity leave or until the child turns 1 (whichever is first). We also have a baby friendly gym with a play pen provided.
I think the biggest step for us has been the pledge the club has given to our female players for the subscription to the Postpartum Plan.
The plan offers players their own personal dashboard, over 100+ resources, nutritionist approved recipes, access to the experts you need, weekly live sessions with experts, weekly newsletter with tips and support, and exclusive discounts to partner brands.
We hope that will support our female players both physically and mentally return to exercise then ultimately back to the field.
Getting the Pledge started
The whole process took around 9 months from coming up with the initial ideas to then getting everyone onboard and finding the right plan to support our Mums to be.
We had started to develop our own plan initially then I came across Postpartum Plan (PPP) and thought: ‘why reinvent the wheel?’
What the founder, Meg, has created is fantastic and we knew we couldn't have done a better job. The thought of supporting another mum's business too excited us.
Since launching the Pledge, alot of clubs have reached out to us to find out more about our sign-off and funding process
We are very fortunate to have a progressive and supportive committee at Stewartry. We recently elected our first female president of the club, Clare Dooley, who is also still a player herself.
Having Clare’s support along with the support of all members of the committee is fantastic and the pledge was passed unanimously. We are going through a club development at the moment, and it so I was in the right place at the right time.
We were just in the design phase of the new clubhouse plans and I asked for the family room to be incorporated, which everyone thought was a great idea.
Not only does this support female players but also club members and visitors' families. There has been many times I’ve not taken my little boy to away games with us, as often the facilities for baby changing are poor/dirty or I’ve worried about where to feed or sterilize so this takes that worry away.
Postpartum Plan:
The PPP is the largest financial ask but we presented it to the committee as a loss of membership due to female players not returning (£150+ per season) vs a one off payment of £150 and making it likely for your players to return.
As a team we may go 2-3 seasons with no pregnancies, then one season have 3 so the cost year to year will vary.
Support Group:
The Support group is pretty simple, although I do see this expanding as more parents use it. It’s something we plan to open not just to players, but to club members and partners too.
It’s a space to share anything from advice, experience, ask questions, arrange meet ups, or share any classes that are coming up.
Maternity leave can be lonely so having other mums to meet up with and chat with is such an underrated asset.
The Family Room and Baby Friendly Gym:
Our Family room is to be built as part of our clubhouse extension starting in 2025. We plan to have clean and calming room with a breastfeeding chair, steriliser, bottle heater, changing facilities and some toys.
The baby friendly gym hours is something we trialed back in 2022, but it probably wasn't advertised as much as it could have been.
I went along with another new mum who had her first child at the same time as me. We would pop the babies in the play pen with some toys while we did a work out.
I think as a mum, although alot of classes/gyms will offer you to take your child along, you can sometimes worry that they will cry or misbehave or that you need to take longer doing your work out and hog the equipment going back and forth to your child. Having set hours where the gym is classed as "baby friendly" takes the pressure off you as a mum and is a much calmer environment.
My advice to any club looking at offering a baby friendly room or gym is to ask. Ask the parents at your club what they want and what they feel would support them.
There’s lots of things I didn't think of as they perhaps weren't important to me however other parents felt were vital. It’s important to work collaboratively on a pledge like this so it suits everyone's needs.
Membership freeze:
It’s no secret that when you welcome a baby into the world your outgoings increase and typically your income will decrease with maternity leave/childcare.
We found that most of our players would stop paying their membership fee anyway but then felt awkward coming round the club not being a member.
So we just wanted to take that awkwardness away and officially state as a club that it’s not expected you pay your membership for that time period and your still encouraged to still be part of the club.
What’s next
Women's rugby is one of the fastest growing sports. Over the next few years, the unions will be throwing money, resource and time into growing the women's game.
I would advise clubs to take a proactive approach to this, have your club ready to support the the womens team and make it an environment that women want to be part of.
Having a pledge like ours could be the deciding factor of whether a player choses to play at your club or the club down the street, or whether a player returns to the sport following child birth.
It shows your committed and serious about women in sport and want to support your players.
We won't stop with the pledge, it's just the start. I'm currently working with a maternity physio, Megan Alexander, who is also a rugby mum at Annan RFC.
Together we plan to come up with a "return to rugby" plan and app which has a specific focus on helping women return to full contact sport.
I have had discussions with the Scottish Rugby Union about this and they are very supportive of the initiative, and keen to help, which is fantastic.
If you’re unable to sign up for regular paid subscription, you can buy me a (greatly appreciated) coffee