To think most “mum friendship groups” are just thinly veiled cliques?

[SharpMintReader]

The school-gate groups and WhatsApp chats often look less like support networks and more like exclusive cliques. AIBU to think “mum friendships” are too often politics in disguise?

One more year and I’m out of it. Can’t fucking wait.

Load of old nonsense that the friendships
dont last! My fab group are a big part of my life see them several times a week! Few of our kids are still friends most on gap years / university now but the parent friendships have endured.

There were cliques when my DDs were at school. I was never in one. There were two mums who I would occasionally speak to (they weren't in the clique either) but certainly not every day.
I hated being stood on my own while other parents chatted. And heaven help you if you tried to join in with the general chat.
DS is on a reduced timetable and thankfully I don't see other parents and miss our on the clique behaviour

it depends I think - location / demographic etc and how much gou want your like dominated by parenthood (ie have gou anything else in your life - hobbies etc )

I see it with my sister already (her youngest starts school this year ) she is cramming as much in to this summer as she has to write some blog about her daughter’s summer and the bar is obviously high !!!!!

NCT groups sound dire too - from what she has said !

That said , my kids went to a school in a deprived demographic and I didn’t feel any of it ( breakfast and after school clubs helped as didn’t do drop off and pick up often )
I did a what’s ap group for a collection for one teacher as son had her for 2 years .

I am still close to a couple of mums who I met at playgroups but our kids went to different schools . We hung out in beer gardens in the holidays - think Motherland

I was never part of these school gate mums groups, but I was always friendly and would chat if given the chance. I mean wouldn’t everyone? I hate this “they must be bitches” if there’s a group of women talking.

I saw one of these women yesterday, coincidentally, and she was so pleased to see me. We had a lovely little chat and then went on our way. She’ll have her friends and I’ll have mine, there’s no need for any deeper thoughts on our motives for such an interaction.

If this was aimed at me for what I said about being on the "wrong side", then you have misunderstood. The woman I posted about has previously done jail time for attacking another woman and also stole from an old lady at her place of work, so no I've never thought she was superior to me. Rather, she probably knew I was superior to her in many ways and decided to try and bully me.
It's not about wanting and failing to be part of a group, but when that one bad egg seems to dominate every school based social interaction and every group it makes you quite withdrawn. In the end I just ended up mostly keeping to myself because I couldn't be bothered anymore.

That sort of thing never appealed to me so I have no idea. I had friends and also made friends at work, didn't need school mums chatting and laughing about nothing at pick up time.

People are entitled to form friendship groups that don’t have to include everyone just because they happened to give birth the same year.

The OPs of these types of posts are never able to give a distinction between a group of friends and a clique.

Probably because you are secure in your own skin and didn't look at picking your child up from school as some sort of social event or popularity contest.

Again the key question is - if these "cliques" are so exclusionary, and so bitchy and nasty, why would you want to be part of them anyway?

I'm sorry you're going through that but your attitude ("nice middle class area" vs "the village mums") might be why you're feeling isolated from other people.

There's only one Mum who might be described as left out in my daughter's class and it's because she can't open her mouth without turning the conversation to her husband's thriving business, their acres of landscaped gardens and her fabulous lifestyle of spa days, shopping and lunch dates.

That, and the mass invite she sent out inviting everyone to bring their kids for a group playdate then swiftly rescinded because her husband didn't want our kids in his house.

Everyone is polite to her but she's not "in the clique" and is often standing off the one side on the playground because her behaviour hasn't made her popular.

This is so sexist and sneery, how do you know they are 'chatting about nothing'

I met my closest local friends via my daughter's school. In fact pretty much all the mums from the year group get on. There have been a few fallouts and there were a couple of mean girls but mostly we socialise, sometimes in bigger groups and sometimes in smaller ones

This sounds like a problem with the school’s communication systems though. Why on earth would one group of friends have access to school related information that others don’t?

I work in a setting where a click seem to dominate. Its hard being on the outside.
Nobody tells you you are excluded (so you can't pull someone up on it) but they are not inviting or welcoming either. The body language tells you you will be ignored if you approach. I have been shut out.
I have come to the conclusion that this dynamic does exist. Its not in my mind. I think its subconsciously done for power, control and image. They all tend to mirror one another and feel threatened by those who do their own thing or can not control.

People have friendship groups. People have different friendship groups according to where and what the friendships are.

No one has to be friends with everyone. It actually isn't possible.

They're not cliques. They are just group of friends.

100% yes.
I’ve been around nasty little cliques my whole life, so I know one when I see one and most of these are.

I stupidly thought the popularity contests would stop when I left school.

What popularity contests?

Just stop seeing it as a "setting" to be dominated. It's a place you drop off and pick up your kids. Why does it need to be a social opportunity? I have never made a single friend through my kids. Why would I automatically have anything in common with my kids' friends' parents? I make my friends doing things I like.

No, I'm not overly friendly but I chime in on the mums WhatsApp group.
There's 15 on it, started 5 years ago.
You can tell who the paranoid people are in the group.
They are the childish ones.
I'm not in a school gate group, never have been.

I am in the "last ones standing" - the three core besties out of ten original baby group friends.

We're going away together as a three this week. We invite a fourth quite often, and a fifth also. The fourth never reaches out to us even though we reach out to her. The fifth is a funny one - she is quite insecure and drops judgemental comments in amongst excessive politeness.

The three of us gel really well. The fourth is also lovely, but she never initiates and never seems to look for the same support from each other so there's less of a bond.

So sue me, I'm in the clique, three women who happen to have really bonded for this time of their life.

I like people, dont mind what setting i happen to meet them in

I don't remember this sort of thing when I was a kid. People just went to school and came home again..there weren't groups of people hanging round the school gates. But then I suppose that was the days when kids walked to school on their own.. I suppose it's too risky now.

Nope. I’m a sahm and couldn’t give a fuck who the other mums are friends with and am happy to keep the school gate chit chat to the absolute bare minimum.

To me, they’re just groups of friends. I made some lovely friendships with other school mums.

However, I can see how feeling excluded from a friendship group at the school gate might feel particularly bad.

-Simply being in a school setting might trigger painful memories of cliques at school.

• People also seem to worry a lot on here about whether their child is likely to be excluded from social occasions because the mums aren’t friends.

• I also suspect that people sometimes feel uncomfortable with the idea that their child might notice that their mum isn’t in the group and feel bad about it or else perceive her differently in some way.

So if you don't notice cliques youre a queen bee bitch basically? Theres a whole world of people in between just living their normal lives as best they can