Tell me about the real life characters at the school gates

[Howtotrainarabbit]

My friends and I love Motherland and talk about the characters being parents of our DC classmates.

We all know one another and get along but it's close to the line in some cases and I don't consider any of them friends.

If I were being unkind I could list them - the judgmental one who is actually very insecure and doesn't talk to any of the women, the CF one who is life of the party but will palm off her DC on you at any opportunity, the awkward but over keen one who thinks everyone is her bestie but they are secretly mean about her, the normal one who can't stand the others (me obviously jk)...

So do I. And I think it’s fine to gently poke fun at it.

It’s a shame some people have had a sense of humour bypass.

Alltheoldpaintings, I don’t think it was an assumption.

From the moment I stepped foot in the school (years 1&3) I saw issues. 6 parents (out of 11 kids in class) left in our first year due to the snobbery and exclusion of their DC. I went to one party and heard one dad comment on how he doesn’t associate with the morons in our shared village. The mums were all SAHMs married to lawyers/stockbrokers/investment bankers and their behaviour was snobby and awful. Amanda in Motherland was nothing compared to these lot. One friend I made left traumatised by the parents. One parent told me she’d complained to the head about not interviewing the parents before letting the DC in and was referring to one of the mums who had a strong Essex accent.

A few of them went after my DC. One, a governor at the school, complained after my eldest bumped hers from the rugby team to substitute, and then complained that my eldest got too many end of year awards, and a scholarship to the senior school. A few complained that my youngest got a science trophy and one even called me up and asked me to share it 50/50 with her DC as they were upset. This went on with other DC. One of my friends DC is a talented goalie and he had to drop to every other match after one queen bee complained that her son wanted to be a goalie too. They got thrashed every time he was goalie.

Bored SAHMs who have bagged a banker and have nothing better to do than use their spare energy and education (often highly educated at private schools themselves) to brew a toxic environment.

The ‘couldn’t give a shit’ mums who see the Queen bee mums and their sycophants and give them a wide berth.

We inhabit different worlds...

My school has the tradie dads who can fit the school run around their work
The nans
The mums with smaller children in prams who aren't back at work yet
The WFH mums (like me) in trackies with maybe a bit of makeup and earrings
The mums who work for the NHS/ supermarket etc and are in some form of uniform before or after work
One tradie mum (paint covered overalls)

No alphas, no betas, no tigers... Just people.

Is it because I live in a deprived area??

The mums with over active imaginations……

Listen, I wasn’t there so I’m not trying to tell you that you’re wrong about your experiences.

But I will say that I’m a privately educated SAHM with a DH who earns at a banker level, my kids are at private school, I know dozens of friends and relatives with kids at private schools all over the country, and I’ve never heard of anything like you’re describing. So maybe you were very unlucky in a really unusual environment.

School mums are just women who reproduced around the same time and chose or got allocated to the same school. All of these stereotypes just seem like another way to criticise women or suggest that women are all either “besties” or “frenemies” or “feuding”. This narrative serves nobody except for the men who’d like to carry on controlling the world, so I’m pretty sceptical of all of these accounts of “alpha mums” and “cliques”.

Most were fine and normal. There was a small group of bitchy mums/dad with similar kids.

Anyone who says the playground cliques don’t exist are either in a clique (or were) or is incredibly naive and/or unobservant. Motherland resonates with women for a reason! Personally I found the dynamic bizarre, it was like on their kids starting school, many mothers turned back into school children themselves. Although tbh I’ve noticed similar dynamics in any larger group of women that I’ve tried to engage with - there are the alphas and the fawners, and then a few on the outskirts who the alphas are horrible to as we won’t just conform to their authority. I find it completely fucking bizarre so I stay out of it and spend my time with women/people that don’t behave like this.

My kid's school must be boring, I just see a load of men and women of various ages and relationships to the child/ren they're collecting standing around in a playground. There don't seem to be an identifiable groups.

PTA types who are always stressed to the point of steam coming out of their ears because of a lack of volunteers for the disco/fair/whatever.

We have a (seemingly lovely) celeb mum who always seems to be surrounded by a few fawning types.

The Quiverfull Christian types with eleventy million children.

One or more in a tracksuit looking a bit worse for wear, usually with a badly behaved preschooler in tow, bit of shouting to be heard.

We're at a local primary where there's also a clear division going on. I work FT and hardly ever make it to the school gates. My husband unfortunately doesn't pay any attention to the groups, but the few times a year I can go, I can clearly distinguish

• the posh mums: mostly very slim, can be dressed in fancy tracksuits and trainers as they're always coming from /going to pilates. Are always too busy to help out with events* and are all on linked in with some type of interior decorator / coach/ hr consultant job which they apparently manage to do in less than 10h a week. (unless it's the bake sale). Usually they don't speak to me as I'm clearly not part of their group.
• the blue collar working mums who actually do work FT around the school hours and miraculously also have time to help out with events. Will speak to me but as they're local and have all their friends and family in the area they have no interest in going beyond a quick hello. They are also a bit protective about the events they organise as they have done it for generations and will be signing up together to man the stalls/bar stand, leaving all the shittier clean up jobs to the newcomers.
• The newcomers (like me) who are trying to find their way in this maze of unwritten rules. Don't belong to any other group, so usually clump together. Looking back, all my mum friends from the school fall outside the posh mum/blue collar working mums groups.

😆

Quite. There's something deeply misogynistic and quite pathetic about all the "school mums" talk on here, it's seriously nasty. Do you think men waste energy slagging each other off like this? "School mums" aren't a separate category of human, they're just women who at that point in the day are dropping their children off at school - it's a tiny snapshot of their lives, just like it is yours. Honestly, get a life and stop bitching about women you barely know anything about.

Guessing this is more of an issue if you live in posh London areas. So glad I don’t live somewhere so snobby.

Years ago now but our school was like the Catholic mafia , the alphas were integrated with the the heads families and of course many of them were governors.
Unfortunatly there were many issues with the school but these families swiftly crushed any murmur of descent on what's app groups or Facebook etc whilst their DC enjoyed being head boy and girl etc.
It was widely known if one of their DC was in your DC class your DC wouldn't win or get any thing.

Most of the parents at my dc primary school seem fairly normal! There was one dad who always took the parents race at sports day very seriously. He would turn up in running gear and spend the whole of the year 6 races doing his stretches. There was always a couple of mums who would call the teachers by their first names and I always wondered if we were all allowed to do that, or they had been specially chosen or if none of us was supposed to and they just did it anyway!

My kids went to different schools because we moved house but I don't relate to any of this. There are the people who already know each other and talk to each other, hardly remarkable as that's what people do, in any environment. I live in a fairly affluent area, and everyone seems very chilled out. We do a hand me down uniform system and everyone is happy to take hand me downs, school party presents are capped low. There is very little keeping up with the Joneses although it's very middle class.

Most people dress very casually, little or no makeup and some wear work uniforms or suits. The one that stands out is the metal head, a mum who wears Metallica T shirts and leather trousers, she has a buzz cut and many tattoos and piercings and a scowly face. Yet she is the heart of the PA, organising cake sales and so on, she knows everyone and everyone seems to stop to have a chat with her. It's funny because its so uncliche.

How can you tell the difference between a group of friends and ‘clique’ though? People are entitled to make friends at the school gates to make the tedious hours go by in a less painful fashion. But equally not everyone who happens to be there is entitled to the friendship of someone that they don’t have anything in common with aside giving birth in the same year.

My DC are at a large 3 form entry primary school
and I haven’t observed anything of what you describe. I do wonder if posters who are so obsessed with other people as ‘cliques’ and ‘alphas’ generally have a paranoid and negative world view?

I think you’ll find from mn that people make assumptions based on a few minutes of interactions eg the ones people see as cold might be preoccupied, worried, tired or busy, the chatty ones might be insecure etc etc

Ok, but maybe if you were at my school you’d think I was in a clique - because every morning you’d see me talking with the same 3 women. In reality I don’t see any of those ; women at any other time, we’re not close at all - but they are always there a bit early, as am I, and we are all chatty people. You can’t really judge that we are a clique based on that kind of snapshot.

I find these threads fascinating because we genuinely have such a ‘normal’ bunch of parents at my son’s school. Everyone is friendly enough, we all make small talk about work/kids/holidays etc then go home 😅 and most of the class is at before/after school club so there’s not that many parents there tbf!

Dad who always wears cowboy boots over jeans

Mum who drives a bright pink porsche

This is so bitchy

In my experience of years of multiple school runs 5 days a week:

• Group of 3 Mums who’ve known each other since they attended the school themselves who openly gossip about everything from their most recent SHEIN purchases to their sex lives. Zero interest in talking to any other parents/making new friends.
• Group of 3 Mums who then join others for a vape/fag and long chat outside the gates after drop off/before pick up. Topics of discontent focus on annoyances with school/their partners/their kids/other family members/neighbours/the council/fallings out.
• Parents who wait in their cars until the absolute last minute possible to get in and out as quickly as possible and generally avoid people.
• 2 who live right next to either gate, but are always the last to arrive.
• Part-time working Mums who make a real effort to be friendly and chat on the 2 days they do the school run.
• Parents who are on the phone on very important calls, striding purposefully in and out, gesturing and mouthing frantically that ‘I’m on the phone!’ to anyone who fails to instantly realise this and tries to say hi 😂
• 1 Mum who is the real life Pied Piper of Hamelin. Brings loads of junk food daily, treats appear from her pocket like a magician- she is hands down the favourite of all the children.
• Parents who constantly need to speak to a member of school staff about Something Very Important.
• Being totally honest, I’m definitely the organised one who everyone catches to ask- what time is x on, what do they need for x event, etc. I don’t mind this ☺️