Who's playing tennis?

Well I am. I played last night for the time in a couple of weeks. Not too badly considering.
But according to a recent article in The Boston Globe, women over 30 are taking up in the game. Women, apparently, who are looking for a way to combat the ennui of stay-at-home momdom?? The article certainly makes that implication by highlighting a woman who took up the game decades ago when her kids went to school and her husband was at work.
The heteronormativity just keeps on flowing throughout the whole thing. Writer Matt Porter does address though that not every woman playing tennis is a wife and mother who stays at home. He discusses working women's leagues. Of course the way he puts working women in quotation marks certainly has multiple connotations. Because it seems like women who work are always going to just a little less...something (moral, nice, sweet, feminine--pick an adjective) than women who stay at home meeting the needs of others without getting paid for it.
What's interesting is that the women I know who play in working women's leagues don't have kids or have kids who are older and thus independent. What this means, and what the article does not address, is that women who do work and who do have families, are less likely to be able to engage in tennis or any other organized sport. One of the tennis clubs I used to belong to had child care but it is the only one I have ever seen that does. (Unlike health clubs which almost all have child care.)
And of course there's the (related) issue of class. Tennis costs money. Not as much money as other sports depending on where you play--public courts are free. And it takes time. I was surprised at how many of us on my new team do not have conventional 9-5 schedules: writers, artists, students. It's a privilege to be able to schedule tennis in the afternoon (when it's also easier and cheaper to get court time usually). And none of that is acknowledged in the article.
I think it's great that more women are playing the sport. The benefits of lifelong movement and physical activity are great combined with the benefits of organized sport. I just wish the writer would have acknowledged some of these issues.