The school run has put me off other women

[SueSuddio]

I used to have a woman problem. In my 20s I mostly sought out male friendship & thought I had nothing in common with other women save for a couple of female friends.

When I got pregnant and had children, my head spun and I felt ashamed of myself with all my internalised mysogyny. I was lucky to make some lovely friends - I gravitate towards women now.

However, I was then introduced to the school run. Tons of women, tons of cliques. And I had a flashback to the bitchy girls at school, the bullies and even my friends who were nice one minute, nasty or ignoring me the next. I'm not getting bullied now, but I'm often getting ignored.

I still think I had internalised mysogyny when I was younger, but I also think it was completely supported by the female nastiness I encountered, echoes of which I see at the school gate.

Hoping it passes but can anyone relate?

Could you form your own clique? That’s what I do when I feel left out works well.

I can relate with your younger years…I found male friendships easier as a child and didn’t relate to many other women in my 20s.
However as I’ve got older I haven’t found any cliques as you describe. Sure some people at the school gate are friendlier with some people than with others but I’ve always thought there were reasons for that: perhaps their partners are friends, perhaps they already know each other from older children, perhaps they have met through their kids at nursery. Etc etc etc. They aren’t actually talking about you and excluding you - they just aren’t thinking about you at all because yknow they’ve got their own lives!

Worth folks bearing in mind that there are legitimate reasons why some women may connect better with men. Eg this can sometimes be a thing in autistic women

There are often threads about school runs in MN. I don't really get it - surely you just go and pick up your kids and go. It doesn't need to be anything more than that. If groups of women are talking - so what? They're not excluding you, they're just chatting.

I didn’t mean to sound so harsh, @SueSuddio — I do remember that it was no fun feeling like a leper every time I did the school run or attended an event. I’d never struggled socially in my life, and I’m a confident person who made a lot of the running to integrate in that setting. It was just a poor fit of person and environment. With hindsight I recognise just how unusual I was there. I still don’t think think it was anyone’s fault, though. Other people just didn’t like me in that context. They were within their rights to prefer other people!

We moved when DS was 7 and even starting in a new place midyear in challenging circumstances I made good friends quickly at the school gate.

Yes, and not only do they expect other women to be extra-friendly and welcoming, they expect that whilst also showing absolutely zero interest or signal to the women in question that they WANT to be friends.

I once heard through the grape vine that a woman at an activity I used to attend thought I was stuck up and felt that my friends and I excluded her from the “clique”. From my perspective, I’d tried to get chatting to this woman when she joined the club but she was very standoffish, very cold, and therefore I assumed she had no interest in being my friend.

I’m not a mind reader. If you act like you are hating every second of talking to me then I will assume you are hating every second of talking to me, and thus will leave you in peace!

@SueSuddio The problem with the "mean girls" is that when they grow up, most of them remain the same. I've also realised that the "hair and makeup" girls don't change much either as they get older. At least not until they are all past child rearing and then they all change, usually for the better.

I now live in a small town that has always been very cliquey. My mil warned me that young mum society was very stratified and that they are all standoffish until they can put you in your particular stratum.

Well, I was very difficult to categorise! I was a SAHP. I had put a professional career on hold. I was an older mother. I was married to a local (many of them knew my husband and his family from schooldays) and yet, I was an incomer. I dealt with it by talking to everyone both at Nursery School and the school gates. I smiled and said hello to everyone I saw. Where others clearly didn't want to talk to me, I ignored their discomfort and nattered on about nothing much.

It was clear at the outset, that those who were also incomers were grateful for the interactions. Those who had large support networks (or thought that their middle class was entitled them to look down on me) learned to put up with it. I played one-upmanship with the snobs, blithely pretending that I didn't see the put downs and not accepting them, I sympathised with those who obviously were struggling and helped if I could. And I introduced them to each other - much to their shock and horror. I'm quite sure that I became "that mad Welsh woman", but my children had playdates and people came to me when I joined the school board (like governors). 30 odd years on, I never had to rely on my husband or his family for contacts and I now know loads of people here, mostly as my children's mother.

Have I made lifelong friends? No. But I did have friends that I had a lot in common with for a time, but we drifted apart as the children got older and others came into my life.

Yes, the school gates can be brutal but how you deal with it is up to you. You can either keep quiet and stay in your bubble, or you can be bold and not accept the little signals that others give off. Mostly, other mothers are terrified of making a move that will cause them to be ostracised from whichever 'group' they belong to. And here we are, back to the mean girls and their 'in groups' or posse again.

I’ve always mostly had female friends but I have had issues with school mums. DC2’s class and their mums were lovely, DC1 was in a horrid class and hardly any of their mums would ever speak to me. I stuck with the mums in DC2’s class and gave up in the other class.

All of this!

^ this 100%

I just don’t like people in general 😂
I keep myself to myself wherever I go. My circle is small for a reason. As long as they don’t bother me, I don’t bother them.

Even in these enlightened times, it is mainly mums doing the school runs. So of course any groups of rude people at school will be largely women. If more men did it, there would be male ‘cliques’. Think people need to remember that confounder before labelling women as bitches.

@PensionedCruiser ** Well done for establishing yourself regardless, great if you have that kind of extrovert, don't give a damn personality, I have a couple of friends like that & they just do well in most places.

Thanks for everyone posting, I'm going to take the result as split. I've been wondering for a while whether to post this as you can get flamed on here for even suggesting women might form cliques & I do get that these 'groups' are not always what you think.

But I'm glad I did, it's been liberating just to talk a tiny bit about my bullying at school & it's lingering effects, something I've just tried to pretend didn't happen.

Good luck in September at the school gates everyone, whether you enjoy it, hate it, flip flop or are neutral.

You honestly can’t see why the OP needs to work on herself?

What I can’t imagine is saying something like this and genuinely having no self-awareness while doing so. I usually assume that there is work to be done on myself before I start dishing out flippant advice.

I’ve said it before on here and I’ll say it again. School mums don’t have to be your best mates or even your mates at all.
Try not to let it bother you.
I’m someone who gets on with men generally better too but I don’t mean this in a weird way, I’m just geeky and I find some men easier to talk to.
Just say hello to everyone, be nice but you don’t need to go overboard about trying to befriend other parents at school. I always had to rush off to work, in a way that makes it easier.
It may happen naturally years down the line.

I think you have to be careful with ignoring. I have about 15 minutes in the playground with the other mums and I can't speak to everyone, I have a son in an older class. Half the conversations.are practical about some arrangements or other, some are more serious like hearing that someone has an unwell parent or other issue. I've also felt like some parents completely ignored me and a few years later I'm round their house for drinks and they're great. I wouldn't judge or hold a grudge, if you want to chat to someone then go for it

I agree about the caution on ignoring. There are 3 mums and 1 dad at the current school who chat with me when available, but if someone else shows up they just don't join in. One of them I've introduced multiple times by mistake to the same people, but she won't talk with them. I have limited time; I want to say hi to everyone, ask one about what days their kid is in after school club that week as we have a choice of 2, ask another about a play date for a local event we half discussed and give a third one the swim details I hadn't got around to texting back when they asked. Join in and you get dialled into any of it that takes your fancy, but step back because I say hi to another person and frankly I can't be arsed to separately update you!