The Promise & Peril Of Mom Friends

When my kids were younger, I had a few groups of women I considered my “mom friends” — the mothers of my children’s friends. Even if you don’t have mom friends, you’re probably aware of mom groups; the media loves them, the more gossipy and scandalous, the better. You’ll see it in the first-hand reports of toxic celebrity-mom group chats and mega-hits like Big Little Lies, which features rich moms, working-class moms, and a murder. These friendships are a focal point of our cultural imagination, where society can project all our ideas and expectations of women raising children in these times. But far from the media and the memes, mom groups are complicated. A source of comfort and camaraderie, yes, but also awkwardness — and sometimes even distress.

The good stuff first: there’s a lot to love about friendships with other mothers. They’re a built-in support network, there when you need them. There is always someone available to pick up your kid when you’re stuck in traffic or give a cuddle when they’re scared at a sleep over. They have an extra pair of shin pads at the soccer tournament when you forgot to pack them, or a nut-free snack on the field trip for your highly-allergic toddler. Underneath the relief these encounters engender lies a deeper and implicit exchange of trust. It says: Please take care of my kid. Please make sure they are cared for, supported, seen, loved. When we’re at our best, we’re working towards a shared goal: helping to raise each other’s children. Building and sustaining the village. There’s joy in that; a bit of magic, too.

These friendships also provide a rare space where we can acknowledge the realities of motherhood, the impossible things asked of women raising children. Whatever it is that’s weighing you down — a partner who calls caring for his own children “babysitting,” unhelpful administrators for a kid struggling at school, a job that won’t give you paid leave — other mothers have undoubtedly been there. They can confirm for you the ways in which society pretends to revere mothers in theory but crushes them in practice, and can help you find laughter in the absurdity of it all.

And yet. These friendships, so tender and interdependent in some ways, can also be a source of unease. It is sometimes tricky to figure out just how much of ourselves to share, and how much we really want to know about the other women in our proverbial village. Some of what we find out inadvertently is funny, or endearing, or the kind of information that brings us closer. On the school group chat we’ll find another mom who has the same sarcastic sense of humor, or who also hates the same teacher that we do. We find out which mom is a Scientologist, which one brags incessantly about her kids. Occasionally we’ll find out intimate things when someone seeks advice about a breast lump or impending separation that she hasn’t told the kids about yet.

But there are other times when scratching below the surface of these friendships and seeing what’s underneath is more complicated. For me, that often involves learning things about other mothers that I wish I hadn’t known. Because knowing requires a decision: what then? What do I do? Or say? Or not say? And, on the flip side, how much do I want to reveal about myself and my own opinions?

My kids go to an international school with a very diverse group of families from all over the world, with wildly different priorities and values than my own. I’m not just talking about voting differently (though there’s that, too); there are moms at school who are anti-immigrant or make jokes about gay people or have blinding amounts of wealth. Some of them yell at their nannies in front of me. Some don’t make their kids wear seatbelts. They think and talk and parent differently than I do. And I’m sure some of them don’t like or agree with me, find me self-righteous or judgmental, with no sense of humor. (Fair on 1 and 2, wrong on 3!) I’m sure I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, either.

For years in situations like these, I struggled to figure out where to draw the line, if at all; if my kids were physically safe, was there anything else I truly needed to consider before I agreed to that playdate or sleepover? Were there questions to ask? And if I didn’t like what I learned, what was I supposed to do rearrange carpool? Encourage my kids to find other friends, so that I didn’t have to socialize and rely on people I didn’t agree with? Is that possible? Perhaps more importantly, is it worth it?

When one of my kids was little and starting a new school, I met a mom at back-to-school night. I mentioned my work with human rights for migrant workers; she went on what I can only describe as a diatribe, without irony, about how domestic workers (the poorest and least protected of the working poor) are entitled and demanding and need to be paid less. And then she promptly invited my kid to a birthday party. Should I have declined the invitation? Said no and argued all night about international labor standards? Said yes and argued about labor standards? Did I even want to engage? In that case, it turned out, I did not. I wanted to go to a birthday party and eat cupcakes and exchange Lego gifts and not have to always be my full self, not have to ponder whether to respond when someone makes an off-color comment, risking either conflict or complicity. I wanted to make small talk, to think about what we have in common (our kids and their friendship), not what separates us (everything else).

Now that my kids are older, the complications of mom friendships have lost some of their intensity. In part, it’s because I don’t rely on other mothers as much as I used to; the days of chaperones and carpools have passed. And my kids have grown, have developed their own opinions and worldviews, largely unaffected by their friends’ parents, despite my fears. Like most teenagers, they’re discerning; they’ve identified a few adults they admire and have written off the rest. And I’ve seen that one of the benefits of living in a community with people who are so different from us is that my family has had more explicit conversations about topics like wealth and race and privilege than we might have had in a social world where people’s behaviors and choices looked like ours.

I realized, too, that my judgements of other moms for the ways they vote or talk or act, or my concerns about their judgements of me — they didn’t matter that much. After all, we weren’t close enough to really change each other’s minds about anything of substance. We weren’t real friends, we were mom friends. I can recognize this category of relationships for what they were: intimate and interdependent, and somehow still distant. I can acknowledge that these mom friends lived and talked in ways that were troubling to me, and that I also appreciated the role they played in my kids’ lives. And I’m reminded, of course, that this is what having a proverbial village is all about; back when our foremothers raised kids in actual villages, they weren’t all best friends, they probably didn’t even like each other that much.

They just had to know that they were there.

Saba Brelvi is a Muslim American writer from California. She holds a BA from Brown University and an MPH from Johns Hopkins University and has spent more than two decades working in the nonprofit sector. She currently resides in Abu Dhabi with her family. The Squatters is her debut novel.