Mom cliques - are you the Queen Bee?

PTA is so competitive and ugly that I no longer even try to participate.

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Am I ever glad you wrote about this!
I avoid these cliques but they are everywhere (and my boys aren't even in school yet!). I tend to be friendly and like talking to other moms. This has ended up in everyone trying to talk to me about others! I'm just not interested. I had really hoped that I would find some other Moms who we4rn't like that, but each time I think I have it disintigrates into something I'd rather avoid. I had really hoped to have fun to enjoy others children and develop a social network of other SAHM's. It just seems like you can't get away from the cliques; disapointing really.

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Yes, I hate these mom cliques as well! I've been spurned from MOMS clubs because I didn't live in the right school district. I also have to deal with not fitting in with some sahm groups because I work part-time, but having no support group as a working mom.

I guess I'm pretty much a Floater Mom. I remember the melodrama of high school, and I in no way want to be in a repeat performance. I'm happy just finding others I have things in common with, and not caring how someone dresses or what school district they live in.

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I see a bit of that in this area and I really don't know how I would feel about becoming part of their "group" -- but that won't happen since I'm a total social-phobe.
I would love the chance to connect with like-minded parents but I haven't found many here in suburia. I think it is especially difficult because I telelcommute from home part of the day and so I've felt a bit shunned by some of the SAHM groups I've tried to connect with. Some of those ladies can be freaky about the fact that they don't "work".

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I totally hear you about the district thing!
Two Moms recently stopped being friendly to me because they found out that we don't own the house we live in (they are our neighbours but obviously not in the smae "class")
It would be hard to be missing out on the SAHM supports as well as the working Mom supports. It makes me upset that our children will have to deal with this too.
Hang in there!

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It's like that here to some extent. Also, I'm much older than the "moms" although there are a few other grandparents I've become friendly with on a casual basis. We tend to seek each other out at the assemblies. I think I'm the only great-grandparent though. It's a little isolating.

It sounds strange even to me to say that I know some of my online friends better than I know many of the parents at the school, but it's true.

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I didn't have time for this b.s. in high school, so I sure don't have time for it now.

I don't engage in this nonsense at all. I have a couple of groups of mom friends--one with kids Diva Girl's age, another currently in the toddler trenches with me, and another set online. None of them paly the drama games that women can so easily get sucked into. And if they started to, I'd leave. I'm a grown up, and this is one instance where I really feel entitled to act like it.

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I wonder if the Mommy Clique thing gets worse as the kids get into elementary school age. I've experienced it somewhat, but since Morgan is still so young its easy to just walk away from those type of situations and I never have to see those people again. I'll bet its harder when your kids are in school and you're trying to be an "involved" parent.
Right now, I am part of a local, internet-organized moms group that is, for the most part, fantastic. Its very relaxed and casual - not the competitive atmosphere that I've experienced in other groups. I've not only made some good friends, but I've expanded my horizons and met wonderful families who I have little in common with and probably never would have met otherwise. HOWEVER, from time to time, we run into some crazy, gossipy, pushy, busybodies who seem to enjoy causing problems and want to be way too involved in everyone's life. These are the type of women who saw the movie "Mean Girls" and felt all nostalgic for the "good old days". Luckily, these people tend not to hang around long in our group because most of the women are mature enough not to get drawn into the drama.

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I think of myself as a floater mom, too, but I wonder how big the gap is between my perception and someone else's. I remember seeing a friend from high school about 10 years later, and she said "you always seemed so calm in high school" and I thought "who the @#* are you talking about." I bet that phenomenon still can be seen too.

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Jenny, that's exactly what I was thinking. What something looks like or what something makes us feel like through our own filters could be very different than the intent of someone else.

I mostly just avoid the whole thing in elementary school but then I feel a little removed from my kid's education.

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Yeah, I'm firmly in the "girl, go get a life" clique.

For the idiots who bought into the idea of cliques and castes in highschool I had only contempt - for the moms who continue it as adults, well, half the time I can't stop laughing and the other half of the time I feel pity that people's lives and worldviews could be so small and narrow that they need to invent drama for themselves.

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At a playdate today, I was comparing the "mom world" to sixth grade. A new mom moved into our neighborhood and she is slowly working her way around trying to put together a playgroup. It's hysterical because she doesn't realize that we all are friends. She'll call and talk about another person and I have to keep defending the neighbors. It's like she's trying to start a splinter group of who she sees as "cool" friends. Yikes.

I don't know if I have outgrown the policitics of cliques or I simply do not care anymore. All I know is that on 5 hours sleep -- just please play nice with everyone.

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I guess I am in a clique of a sort. The same group of parents you see at dance, swimming, the park, plays, movies and after school activities (in my child's age group) are the same ones I typically gravitate to when your standing around waiting for your kid. We don't get together for BBQs or formally meet anywhere. It seems they are just as active as a parent as I am and we all must kind of be on the same page. The unique thing is some work in/out some do not we all dress different and varying economics as well. Some seem more stressed than others. Even though we may see each other many times a week in many places and never actually talk it seems we do seek eachother out just for a smile.

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I must be a floater; see my nickname there? Yeah, that's me. Aging punk rocker, progressive liberal, non-religious, don't give a CRAP about sports or jewelry or what's on TV; I simply don't much fit in. And I don't much care, either. People either like me or they don't.

I, too, try to avoid the elementary scene as much as possible. It really *is* all the "cool" moms running the PTA and all of the stuff going on (Carnival, Ice Cream Social, blah blah blah). We go to the activities, but I've stopped volunteering to help run them. I'll donate a baked good or money or something, but I'm so *not* going to spend my time making small talk with people who don't really like me. I also spend time volunteering in the classroom; reading with kids, helping with math, photocopying for the teacher. I've had good relationships with all the teachers (except one and she was just a bad teacher all around), because I think they get sick of the games the other moms play, too. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, because I'm still helping with my kids' education, I'm just not helping with the Fall Fest, or whatever the event du jour is.

I don't think it's affected my kids' social lives, either. My son just naturally doesn't have a load of friends, my daughter is a social butterfly, and I don't feel the need to be friends with my kids' friends' parents. If it so happens that we click, great. If not, no biggie. I'll still have the kid come over and I'll still send my kids to their houses. So far it's been fine. No ones' social life has been ruined.

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I'm so not a fan of mommy cliques. I think that I was in one when my kids were young, but back then there really weren't the mommy wars that there are now. You just parented the best you could, and if people disliked your parenting style, they avoided you. When I was in a group (it wasn't really a clique at all) of friends, what brought us together is that we all had 'spirited kids', kids that were more active and more headstrong than your regular every day toddler. We got together because we understood, and we didn't think the other's kids were brats. We're still friendly today, a dozen or so years later. But the focus was always on the kids and not on how cool the moms were. Because this groups of moms wasn't the least bit cool, we were all a bunch of geeky engineer types.

I can't stand the cliqueness that I see in the mommy world right now. I think so much of it has to do with a lack of self esteem that these new moms have, in both themselves and their parenting skills. They find a disparity between when they were cool urban singles drinking cosmos in the bars all weekend, and being a SAHM now, and they have this huge desire to prove how they are still cool. I think it's sad. Life changes all the time, and hanging on to that short bit of time when you were way cool is sort of pathetic, isn't it?

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This is so true... it is the only actual mommy war that exists. I am so sick of going into new situations, e.g. my daughter's first gymnastics class, and the mothers are so entrenched with one another. And going to the park when a playdate is going on -- mothers can be really rude to others around them when you are not part of their circle.

I find myself to be a pretty nice person and I always feel so defeated b/c I am always looking for new friends who are mothers (that I can identify with) and the social circles seem so closed. And at my daughter's preschool, there is always event planning and fundraising going on that I am just intimidated to get involved with. Everyone seems so "cliquey" that I just don't bother.

I just wish I could find some like-minded floaters who are not freaky fake, have some intelligence, and don't take themselves so seriously.

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Yikes. I am a first-time mom with a 9-month old, and am just about to enter into activities with my daughter in which moms will also be involved (we start our swim class in a couple of weeks). I was really, really looking forward to connecting with other moms and making some new friends, because it seems a lot of "old" friends don't have as much time for me now that I have a child and they don't. Honestly, and call me naive, I didn't know these cliques still existed at this time in my life. I thought I left all of this behind when I finished high school! I always had a lot of friends and was popular, but I also knew that I didn't want to ever work that hard again to remain such. I thought being a mom would naturally connect me with other mothers and it scares me now that I might have to go through all of that crap again. If that's really going to be the case, then how do you "connect" with people but not get sucked in and/or seem aloof if you don't get sucked in? It's almost like you can't win either way!

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Amen Imperfect Mama! I wish that you lived near me and we could hang out! :) I'm still amazed at the rude behavior of some mommys that I encounter. What is their deal anyway? What kind of exammple are they for their children? They are more competitive than any of the women I encountered in graduate school, and some are just plain mean. It is incredibly defeating, to say the least, but I'm learning to make peace with it.

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But Margalit it sounds like you're saying only un-hip mothers who are 'geeky' can have a circle of friends without being called a 'clique'. I don't think that's entirely fair.

Another thing I'm thinking of is how incredibly shy and introverted I am. So that when a new mom comes along, maybe I stick with my comfort level (with the people I know) not because I'm a 'Queen bee' or a bitch but because I'm terribly uncomfortable in new situations.

It's a personal failing which has nothing to do with a 'clique' but could appear that way.

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I don't really have anything in common with the local mommy cliques and I commit the sin of talking to the dads because we have more in common. (Geek girls are far and few between. I've only run into one other geek mama here.) I don't watch desperate housewives or tv really and my major is computer science, so there's not too much to talk about with the moms since I don't like to do the milestone competition. I'm not looking forward to dealing with that again when Paul goes to school.

We have a pretty decent tech sector here, and a lot of the dads work in various areas of IT, so it's easier to find common ground there. The dads in general seem to be much more easy going, and there's not really a competition, unless you count the goofiest way to describe your kid's current phase in pseudo code.

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