Mom cliques - are you the Queen Bee?

This is so old already.

We totally have problems with cliques in our MOMS club. It's gotten so bad that some of the more agressive, cheerleader types have made the timid, sensitive mom types cry. I just stand back and shake my head. I don't understand.

Maybe it comes from the fact that I've been in engineering for so long. When you work with 80-90% men, you get treated like one of the guys, with perks. It's so hard to go back to hanging out with women. I hate feeling like I'm being judged on my appearance, or my tax bracket, or my religion or lack thereof. Why can't we all just agree that we're not Hollywood celebrities who can afford colonics and personal trainers? My sole purpose in life is not to look like Charlize or Angelina or Jennifer, it's to take care of myself and my family.

It's bullshit.

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My son is so young still that I'm not enough part of the mommy scene to know about all the cliques. I did join a mom's group and I have a few other mommy friends, but it doesn't seem like a posse. That said, I never did have much of a posse in high school either; I was a floater then too.

What strikes me is that all your commenters are so anti-clique, it's almost a theme. Maybe this is the baby-blogosphere mafia forming its own clique. Just a thought.

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Missy, I've been the victim of the MOMS Club in more ways than one. Ugly women often gather under big umbrellas.

Heather, oh god, absolutely. The blog-world is full of it's own sets of people. Of course, the people who 'hate the popular' bloggers often devote air time to how much they hate the 'popular' bloggers.

Whereas the so called 'popular' bloggers generally have nothing negative to say about other bloggers.

It's an interesting twist on the topic.

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Seeing as how I'm the mommy none of the other mommies talk to, I suppose I'm one of those left-out ones. Is there a clique for mommies who only really talk to nannies and mommies from other countries?

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It's all about out perceptions. Smart vs. Dumb, Popular vs. too cool to care, in vs out up vs down. I can tell you that once you shut your mind to those perceptions it can be easy to become friends with people you (thought) you'd hate. I worked with a girl who was very trendy, clubby and was super bitchy and I was totally intimdated by her. Turns out she grew up on a farm and hated all her friends and thought that everyone she knew was really shallow & meaningless. We became great friends. She bullied me into wearing makeup and I bullied her into admitting her "friends" were idiots.

Its esay to judge a group and I'm aware of the alpha mom mentality - but I gotta speak up and say that even bitches can be fun once you get them one on one.
And you know whats even more fun sometimes? Being a bitch to a bitch and then being able to laugh about it with her.

Screw the high school drama and all those insecurties. We're all the alpha moms of our own tribes and if we dole out the respect to all the other moms who are trying to "do it all" it will come back.

And seriously, if some group of moms were to judge me about my tax bracket/religion/housing status, I'd honestly just do my best to freak them out - which makes me feel better.

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When I was pregnant, I had such high hopes for making mommy friends. After my daughter was born, I went to my first support group and had immediate flashbacks to high school. I didn't have the right diaper bag, my little girl wasn't dressed to the nines in the right clothes, and we didn't roll in with the right stroller. The other babies are either several months older than mine and their mothers act like they can't be held back by my little one.

I still go to the group every week, just to get out of the house and to give my little girl a chance to socialize with other babies, but I've given up trying to make real connections with these women. I nearly drove myself crazy trying to be their friend when I was 16, I'm too old and too smart to do it now.

I'll keep joining classes and trying other groups. Maybe, just maybe, there are some normal mommies out there like me who just want to be friends.

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Like OH My God!!! I am so no looking forward to this crap. My son is only 7 months right now, and its almost spring, time for playgrounds and the inevitable Mommy cliques. High school was bad enough, now we have to deal with people judging how we raise our kids? great. I hope that for my sanity's sake i can find some cool moms in my area, but alas, i live in a tiny town. So im guessing theres only two cliques, the popular gossiping group, and the losers that didnt fit in with them.. where does that put the NORMAL people?

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As someone living in a small city at the moment, and who is normally on the fringes of things anyway, I don't even bother approaching other women. Just going out with the sling elicits so many comments (some good at least) that I can't imagine actually interacting with some of these women. I can't be bothered.

But I also liked someone's comments about becoming friends with people you thought you hated. I've done that before-I find that sadly, in the end, shit usually comes up anyway.

Sadly, some people never have the need to come out of their little words. Rectal Cranial Inversions abound.

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It is shocking that motherhood, the most ancient occupation, still leaves too many woman isolated from each other.
Just like in high school, i beleive, cliques exist as a necessary means for people to find friendship stability and support.
"These woman" in mommy cliques are doing the exact same as we are, changing diapers, late night pukey cleanups, singing "I'm the map.." enjoying our children and learning and adjusting to the motherhood role.
The Mommy Wars certainly do exist here on Bloggingbaby.

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When I discovered a few of the younger moms at daycare with kids a few months younger than mine starting to ask me for advice, I got very very scared. I was happy to tell them what I had experienced but I'm not anything close to an expert. (I point them at the websites I found useful, and to my LC, and leave it there, if possible.)

Anything that resembles high school sends me running for cover. I'd give almost anything to block my memories of high school forever. Sign me up for that spotless mind stuff. I graduated 22 years ago and it's still painful to think abou†.

It would be great to have local moms to hang out with, assuming someday I have the time and the energy. I'm enjoying the company of other on-line moms instead. So far, most of my friends either had their babies ages ago or haven't had any yet.

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It seems like a lot of us are in the same boat. Why is it so much easier to find & connect w/ women who are "like us" online than it is IRL? Is it geography?

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Eden: I don't think it's easy for some moms to be themselves at playdates, especially for those of us who fall too much outside the norm. It's hard to be yourself when you know that it might be the end of that playdate group, and it's a group your child really gets along with.

I tend to fall pretty far outside the norm, and it's hard to talk about something outside of kids with a lot of the other moms I've met. We don't really have any other common interests, so conversation just dies off and I don't think it's really satisfying to either party. There's just not really a place to hook into a friendship.

My online mom friends tend to be a lot more tolerant of things, like understanding "not Christian" doesn't mean I'm like a satanist in a really bad B movie. Most of these are semi anonymous, so we can say things we probably wouldn't say at a playgroup. We can safely say that we hated pumping for months on end or that being a sahm can really suck sometimes without becoming the local playdate pariah.

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A lot of these comments tell me that most moms are acting fake. Out of the thousands of readers to BB not one "clique" mom has voiced an opinion. Not one mom has made a case for being exclusionary. I really don't think that moms are *really* that snooty - not deep down.

I think women fall into traps and roles and we don't feel safe being honest about who we are - and god forbid that the others moms find out how we really live.

Women are so convinced that we won't be accepted for saying what we really think, and acting the way we really want to that we tend to exist in this ephemeral world of cool smiles, bland opinions and fierce protection of our "circles".

We're really not all that diffent - and we know it. We're just really afraid to let go of these impressions we've created of ourselves.

I say fuck it.

I'm a weirdo. I'm geeky. I'm honest and goofy and if you are my friend I'll tell you to your face what no one else will. I'll see through your bullshit and if I like what I see I'll go for it. I've learned all this by being intimitaded by a girl who became a great friend to me and by being fucked over by some pretty nasty girls when I was younger. Its time that we just open up and say what we really think and feel until we can find someone who identifies with us.

At least then we'll be able to know who our real friends are.

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I can really relate to that feeling of not fitting in ... and in highschool I did fit in. I've found the mother's groups much trickier terrain to navigate than any petty highschool moment and have pretty much given up trying. I'm a journalist on maternity leave from a Sydney newspaper. Moved here with husband who has an internet job - just for a few years. And what was amazing is that the cliques are the same all over the world! I've got good friends here - some with kids and some without and I wont join a mother's group. I think I need more to bind me to another woman than just the fact that we've got kids.

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Very interesting article, and reading the comments was quite valuable for us males, who deal with these issues entirely differently then laidies. I believe the author does speak on King Pin Dads, but more importantly a single mom wrote an essay for NPR recently which spoke to how Mommy support groups like to beat on us Dad's. ( I guess its like guys do blame 'da wife' on this or that...)

The point of my post is this "love god, love your family and love thy neighbor. Respect all (even when they do things to dis-earn that respect). And realize that many people are shy, insecure, manipulative or all three. But who are we to judge!

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I am the mother of a 2 year old girl and try to be as active as I can with MOPS and another mom's group, but I really do feel like I'm back in high school. I guess I'm what the article refers to as an invisible mom. I try to be friendly, but I don't seem to fit in with the cliques, and find many mothers I run into rude and unwelcoming. I want to meet some other moms who are real and not playing games. We're moms now, we need to act grown up.

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I've given up being friends with other moms. In my area, there are many other military wives/mothers, but I don't fit in with them because either I'm not foreign or because I'm ex-military myself. I'm an introvert, and I struggle to take all 3 of my kids out by myself. We live in a large neighborhood, but so far I've barely even had a friendly wave returned. So I keep in touch with all of my old friends (pre-kids), and the ones I've made online share my interest in either politics or sci fi. I was a theater techie in high school, but I was on speaking terms with nearly everybody. I thought cliques were useless then, and I still think that now.

I always thought the military spouse community would be friendly and welcoming, but that's one of the biggest cliques out there... women tend to assume the rank of their husbands, and try to exude influence on others. I don't understand how some people can be so hateful... I just want an adult to talk to, while my kids have someone else to play with. It seems to much to ask for.

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I inadvertently found the solution to my problem with feeling excluded from all of the "mommy cliques" in the area I lived in.

We just moved from an affluent upper middle class suburb in a large city (also need to mention that I was NOT brought up in this kind of environment - more like middle/working class). Never wanted to live in the 'burbs especially, but since we were starting a family, and we couldn't afford to live in the intown trendy areas without renting, we eventually settled in a gorgeous subdivision complete with country club, etc. From the get-go I was treated either as an invisible mom or an outcast. Most of the time, my smiles weren't returned and hellos were greeted with a look of disdain, incredulous looks (you're talking to me, who are you anyway?), or I was completely ignored. I love getting to know all kinds of people; I'm definitely a talkative extrovert, so this continuously eroded my already shaky self-esteem. When I took my kids to the pool at the club, if they fussed or occasionally yelled, I was glared at, and treated like I was some kind of out of control mom. So, you get the picture - I gave up on my neighborhood.

At school, again, it was all about where you lived, who you associated with, what income bracket, etc. I made maybe two friends there who eventually discussed these issues with me, and agreed that it was ridiculous (and this was a "religious" school).

My solution was to find areas where there are a more diverse group of people and get to know them there: the park, children's stores, libraries, etc. I ended up making my best friends with those who lived 45 minutes to an hour away from me, but it was worth the drive (we'd alternate weeks).

After moving to my current location, and having learned a lesson, we moved to an area where my husband can still have access to his golf, yet there is a wide range of socioeconomic status. This stuff shouldn't even be important, but to so many it is. Anyway, the school my children go to is a great christian one (no, I don't believe christian schools are the only good ones, it just works for us), again, with a diverse group of children attending. There are a few cliques, but in general everyone is extremely warm, friendly, and caring. You can make three new friends at this school in one day, who turn out to be as nice as they seemed at the beginning. The first week, I drove home from picking up my kids, and started crying with happiness. In my neighborhood there are a few image-conscious, who-do-I-want-to-be-seen-with moms, but they have no effect on me, because I have met so many neat people in my neighborhood, at church, at gymnastics class, ballet, etc. Yes, me, the talkative, sometimes geeky outsider, finally realized that maybe there wasn't something wrong with me after all!

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