‘Honestly, I know it sounds melodramatic, but it was the worst part of my day.’ My friend, Rebecca, raises a wry smile. ‘It seems ridiculous in retrospect, but I genuinely dreaded it. You think you’ve left all that stuff behind when you become an adult. And then you realise you have to go through it all again.’
Rebecca isn’t talking about some deep-seated childhood trauma. She’s referring to the school run. Or, more accurately, the cliques at the school gate that, for many parents, are like a return to the playground politics of their childhood.
When my daughter started in Reception, aged four, I assumed that my only concern about friendship cliques would be related to her and her peers. Would the other kids be kind? Would they play nicely? Would she find friends?
But I fast realised that the playground wasn’t the only place where clique dynamics might be an issue.
As a working mum, I was never going to be in the 'coffee after drop-off' gang. I’m a novelist, started work as soon as my husband and daughter left home in the morning, and was on pick-up duty at the end of the day. I was far from the only working mum so didn’t feel an outlier. And I figured that brief daily chats at pick-up would ensure I was sufficiently in the loop.
It swiftly became apparent I was wrong. A School Mum Clique emerged, who’d go for regular coffees after drop-off, organise spa weekends and dinner parties. Mums who lunched together, attended daytime pilates, went to the same hairdresser and purchased the same crossbody bags. Mums who shared information about school activities that they chose not to divulge to the wider WhatsApp class chat. Mums who, before long, were organising joint family holidays.
The School Gate Clique weren’t unfriendly, as such. I have no doubt they would simply have considered themselves to be friends. They’d chat to you if none of their besties were around, or message you if they needed information their gang couldn’t provide. But there were classic clique tendencies too: gossiping (often unkindly) about other parents and their children, ignoring you when it suited them, and sending their kids to school with items that marked them out as the ‘special’ group.
Initially, it didn’t bother me: I didn’t have time for daytime pilates, and cliques aren’t my scene.
But as the years progressed, the Clique Mums’ friendships began to shape the kids’ relationships: extensive socialising outside of school meant their kids became best friends too. Somewhat inevitably, a child clique emerged in the playground which mirrored the parent clique. As the kids got older – more confident pre-teens – it became more dominating: unkind, exclusionary behaviours followed, ignored by the mums as it would threaten their own friendships.
As a novelist, it was fascinating to watch it play out. It was less fun for the kids in the playground. But it also became clear to me that all parents – especially working parents – need allies at the school gate. There are days you’re in a meeting and need another parent to scoop up your child. Days when your child has forgotten their homework and you need a screenshot. Days when you can’t find that email about World Book Day at 10pm.
Luckily, there were enough kind, helpful, non-cliquey parents in my daughter’s year who would do those things and for whom I would reciprocate. Finding such allies was, for me, one of the most important learning curves during the primary school years.
Talking to other friends, it’s clear that the School Mum Clique is perennial. My friend, Suzy, had a similar experience fifteen years ago. ‘There was a really dominating group of mums who were very performative and ostentatious in their friendships. I’d take a book to the school gates, bury my head in it and hope to avoid them.’
When I began writing my novel, Three Mothers, I wanted to reflect some of the school gate dynamics that seem so ubiquitous. My protagonists include long-term best friends Abby and Nicole, and a newcomer to the school, Jenna. In it, I explore what might happen to those bonds – and to the outsider – when tragedy strikes one of their children.
My daughter is now at senior school where there’s thankfully less opportunity for school gate politics. I’m relieved to have left those days behind. But as I tell my almost-teen daughter: there will always be cliques wherever you go. The trick is not to be sucked into them, nor to idealise them from the outside: there are invariably a host of toxic dynamics going on inside. What’s important – both for kids and their parents – is to find a way to navigate around them, seek out people you can rely on and trust: those who will genuinely be there for you when you need them.
Hannah Beckerman’s gripping fifth novel, Three Mothers, is published by Lake Union on 1 May.