AIBU to ask how much social circles depend on schools, quite shocked at friends attitudes...

[LeftOftheRight]

I've never been very good at big social circles of friends, often failing to understand them and preferring a couple of really good friends! When I met my husband I moved to his area and inherited many of his friends which all are lovely people. My two best friends live about an hour away, we speak most days and see each other every few weeks but I've always felt a bit of an outsider in the village I live. Since having children I noticed the drifting of the social circle where we live, people we have always felt good friends being busy etc and distances growing, however we still saw people relatively regularly. Now we've selected schools, we have chosen to send our child to a school outside of our local village. Suddenly its like we've been cut off, all our friends in this village are meeting and doing things together looking forward to their children being at school together. Normally we have a picnic together on the BH tomorrow and I just found out they are all going and we weren't invited. when I asked why it was due to our son not going to school with their children (there are 4 families involved in this) and them wanting to make sure the children all had good relationships. I found this odd but have thought that when we have seen anyone they've been critical of our choice of school or defensive of theirs - quite frankly we choose a different school as we felt if suited our ds better that was it. I can't think of any other reason as there was no fall out or any issue but we did keep quiet about school choices due to knowing others would find it odd, and it didn't go down well.
On the other hand we have suddenly been invited to lots of social gatherings by parents we don't know brilliantly from the school our child will be going to. I think this is lovely of these parents and really will make a difference to our son.
Long story short that is my question - is this inevitable? Social circle will revolve around school? My closest friends will always be there but I think I have been naïve in thinking things wouldn't change too much with ds going to a different school.

OP has said - I think it more to do with type of school which we've selected which promotes a style of learning we're more comfortable with. Could be Steiner, could be military school .

In either case, or at the many points in between, it's not mainstream, and that will be part of the issue.

Lots of people who select these alternatives are not very sensitive to other people's lack of freedom to make the same choices. I've noted a real tendency to slag the mainstream option off with no sense of properly exploring it. I'm not levelling this at you OP but you are caught in its ripples.

In small communities I think it can be very common for a lot of parents to have social lives mostly with the other school moms. Villages without schools seem to lack a heart, ime.