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Basketball Mom’s Unfit?

© Colleen Bittner

Like any other good single parent, Pamela McGee is trying to make a good living for herself and her three-year-old daughter and her ten-year-old son. Because of this, she is losing custody of her three-year-old, Imani. Pamela McGee is a forward for the Los Angeles Sparks, of the WNBA. Kevin E. Stafford, McGee's ex-husband, thinks that McGee can't be a good basketball player and a good mother at the same time.

"I'm not saying she can't be a parent because she plays basketball," he said, "but Imani needs her to be a guider, a teacher. She needs her affection and moral upbringing." Why can't McGee give her daughter affection and moral values? What does being a basketball mom have anything to do with her love for her child? I can almost assure you that there is nothing in Pamela's contract that says she is not allowed to love her child or raise it in a moral home. It was reported that Stafford implied that he had a problem not with the WNBA in itself, but with working mothers as a whole. He is a working father - how is that different? There are many female basketball players who have children and seem to be doing just fine. There are eighteen mothers in the WNBA and ABL. Many of the NBA players have children.

Taj McWilliams, a 6-4 forward/center for the Philadelphia Rage, ABL, has been in a similar situation, and is not surprised that the courts ruled as they did. "...Being an authority on the subject of motherhood, child custody, and being a single parent, I find it easy to believe that the courts did this. I was in a custody fight also, and the courts took Michele away from me, not for long, during the first year in Richmond. It was a devastating month. I even considered retiring because the judge would not reset the hearing date for the next week. Michele was in school taking some exams and such and I was playing. So they had the hearing without me there, and decided to give her to her father, who had not taken care of her since she was three months old..."

When McGee and Stafford divorced in 1996, they shared joint custody. During the season, Imani stayed with Stafford's parents, who live in California. Imani's father has had custody of Imani since the beginning of the year. Since then, McGee has only seen her daughter fourteen days. When McGee and Stafford divorced a year ago, at his request, it was because Pamela wasn't satisfied being a "pastor's wife sitting on a bench." McGee is an ordained minister. She wanted to preach; she believed there were women in her congregation who needed to hear what she had to say. "My husband did not want that," she said.

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