To think a lot of people in school mum cliques, are actually thinking, how the fuck do I get out of this ….

I haven’t had an issue with cliques. I chat to a bunch of parents. It doesn’t bother me if there are groups who chat to each other without me, I don’t consider them to be a clique. I’m happy to stand on my own in the playground as well.

Since my children have been babies I’ve chatted to other parents at the library, in the playground, at nursery etc so I hope my children can see that it’s good to be friendly and not that hard to start up conversations.

I call this paranoia

It's truly appalling.

Social anxiety and shyness are one thing: understandable that some people struggle with social situations.

Convincing yourself (and by extension your children) that it's some giant conspiracy and other school mums are out to exclude you is properly unhinged.

If you really believe this stuff, at least keep it to yourself for the benefit of your kids: you owe it to them not to pass it on to them.

Yes, one wonders if having been imbued with this attitude by patents from a young age goes some way to explain how widespread complete paranoia about friendships is on Mn.

Plus the idea that ‘school mums’ are some kind of alien tribe with cruel, arcane rules. When most of the posters complaining about them are themselves parents of primary school children, hence themselves ‘school mums’, just like the rest.

This is paranoia on stilts to be honest and some of you need to stop and think about the kind of self pitying and suspicious worldview you are passing on to your children.

This. And the ‘I have to stay in for the sake of my child’s friendships!’ is from the same school of self-dramatising nonsense as ‘Oh, I’d have liked to get married in jeans with two witnesses, but my family would have been sooo disappointed, so I had to have 200 guests, a rehearsal dinner, a next-day barbecue and a white dress with cathedral veil!’

The exact times that I want to be with my family, not someone else’s.

I think a lot of Mums get in to the PTA to be seen in the goody two shoe clique - then think WTF have I got in to, I’m now constantly hounding the other parents for money and donations and fucking volunteering via WhatsApp and they all bloody hate me.

That is definitely a thing.

Literally never had this problem with 2 dc across 3 schools. I do have some other mums and dads who are friends. Never been in a clique. Never had to hang out with anyone I didn’t want to. I have a life outside of school and my evenings and weekends are full of my actual fun, interesting life. Definitely no time or interest in prosecco with the school mums. I don’t really see any of this happening really in our schools. Occasionally, yes, people get together, but it’s not all over social media and it’s not really a big cliquey deal.

Its possible to do school drop off, have a friendly chat and still go to work, depending on how you organise your life. Being too busy to chat does not make one superior

Agreed. The ones who turn up 15 minutes early specifically to have a gossip really get me, ditto the ones loitering around after drop off. I feel a bit bad for them. The cliquey mums tend to not have much going on. Think they just do school run, clean and go to the gym.

Plenty of dads are friendly at the school gates and possibly beyond. How come no one ever talks about “school dad cliques”?

There was a point on MN I used to think my DC had been to the only schools in the country with no school gate cliques. Then I looked around, shook my head and remembered people write/post about the man biting the dog, not the dog biting the man.

School, work, hobbies, church groups, community activities etc are great places to meet, form acquaintanceships and occasionally we find longer term friends. However anyone going with an expectation of more than companionable acquaintanceship is setting themselves up for disappointment. Be open to the potential of actual friendships forming but don’t expect it from any random group of people.

Why do the school gates get such a hard time. There are far less posts about workplaces and hobby groups. Both also full of people you might not have anything in common with, people with existing friendships, people who aren’t looking for deep connections and people who are awful. But at school there seems to be more expectation and entitlement to friendship, and then they feel aggrieved that they haven’t found it.

I think referring to groups of women who form friendships with other women through their children as “cliques” is sexist nonsense. Men don’t get accused of the same when they become friends with other dads.

Moreover, no, it’s not hard to “get out” of a friendship group. They’re not drug gangs FFS.

I must have been very lucky but I enjoyed socialising with school parents (mums and dads). I always had fun at the kids' parties - lovely to see the kids enjoying themselves, and have a bit of adult company. Ditto park trips. We did class camping and parent drinks (everyone invited but not everyone came) and now my kids have moved on I still do coffee, walks and the odd pub trip with people- quite often our kids weren't particularly close but I like the parent and we are grown ups who can rise above. I'm getting to know some parents at my youngest's secondary school now by putting a bit of effort in, which I know is frowned upon on here but has been v helpful with my eldest to have a bit of a sense of who she's with and to check in with re school stuff.

Same with work colleagues - people get very sniffy about work socialising too but honestly I spend a lot of time with these people, we have work in common at least, which comes with at least some shared values, and there's always common ground to find with people. I can't imagine deliberately shutting myself off from people the way Mumsnet seems to encourage.

I totally agree, its so paranoid and sexist.

Blokes don't moan about other blokes at their work going to play golf/go to the pub/go to lunch together as "cliques".

Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.

I was ostracised by one when my DD was tiny. They did me such a big favour.

Primary schools exist to educate your child, not to provide a full social life for a parent.

Dads aren't complaining about school gate cliques because they don't really have any expectations that their child's school is there to provide friends for them

Your children spend six hours a day together at school. They are perfectly capable of developing and maintaining friendships in that six hours.
They also don't need parents accompanying them to playdates forever.

Just be civil and helpful to other parents like you would be with work colleagues.

Parents might make close friendships at the school gate too - which is also fine! But it shouldn't be the expectation that you will or must. Or that this means the kids must be close friends. My friends' kids are not particularly close - they've known each other for years and been on annual camping trips etc but they just aren't very similar. It's all perfectly civil but their deep friendships are elsewhere and that's fine. They go round to their best friends' houses themselves without parental involvement beyond knowing they are there.

Why are groups of mums who may know each other pre school, or who have just started a conversation that day, called a clique?

Grow up, its just mum dropping kids off, nothing more nothing less

What pray tell, did you do before school?

What a bleak way of approaching life.

If your DH was firm about then, then of course that is the way to go!

How very sad.

This