Why Is It Harder To Make Mom Friends As An Adult (And What Actually Works)
Last Tuesday, I stood in the kindergarten drop-off line holding a lukewarm iced coffee, staring at the mom I’ve waved to almost every morning for three months. Her son sits next to my daughter at circle time, she wears the same faded black rain jacket I own, we’ve both commented on how the PTA sells overpriced cookie dough for fundraisers. When our eyes met, we both smiled. Then we both immediately looked down at our phones. The bell rang, kids ran inside, and she drove off before I could think of anything to say besides “have a good day.”
I moved to this town two and a half years ago, right after my second kid was born. When I had my first, back in our old city, I thought making mom friends was easy. We were all stuck in birthing class together, then the hospital new mom group, we exchanged numbers and texted about sleep regressions at 2 a.m. But after moving, that automatic community didn’t pop up. I tried the local mom Facebook group, showed up to a planned playdate once, and left after 45 minutes of feeling like the new kid who didn’t get anyone’s inside jokes. I went to a book club for moms a year ago, sat in the back eating a store-bought brownie, and never went back—everyone there had been friends since before they had kids, and no one asked me a single question about myself beyond how old my kids are.
Last month, I was complaining about this to Mrs. Henderson, the retired preschool teacher who lives two doors down, while we pulled weeds along our shared fence. She had two kids in the 1980s, and she put it pretty simply: back when she was a new mom, all the women on the block stayed home, so after morning naptime, everyone just ended up on someone’s front porch with iced tea. No one scheduled it. It just happened because everyone was there. Now, half the moms I know work full or part time, and the other half are shuttling kids from soccer to piano to art class six days a week. We don’t have that unplanned empty space to just hang out and talk. Friendships used to grow out of proximity and unstructured time, and now we barely have any of that. That’s why it feels harder.
Social media doesn’t help, either. I scroll and see posts of mom groups on weekend getaways, matching hoodies, gushing about their “village” and I think everyone else has this close-knit group except me. Then last month, I mentioned this to my dental hygienist who has two kids the same age as mine, and she laughed and said she’s lived here five years and only has one mom friend she actually calls when she needs a last-minute babysitter. Turns out, most people are faking the big perfect village thing, or they’re just as lonely as I am.
After a couple years of fumbling through it, I’ve found a few small things that work, no big effort required. First, I stopped leaving my phone in my hand at drop off. I just tuck it in my bag and stand there. That one tiny change means people actually talk to me, because I don’t look busy and wrapped up in something else. It sounds too simple to work, but it’s made more of a difference than any organized mom group I joined.
Second, I stopped doing the vague “we should hang out sometime” line. That just hangs in the air, no one follows up, and everyone leaves the interaction feeling awkward. Now I use specific, low-stakes invites that don’t require anyone to rearrange their whole schedule. After that awkward morning in drop off, I noticed the same mom’s kid has the same nut allergy as mine, so the next day I said, “I’m picking up nut-free cookie dough after school today, we’re going to eat it at the little park by the rec center before swim practice. It’ll only be 20 minutes, do you guys want to join?” It’s easy for her to say no without feeling bad, and it’s not some big stressful get-together. She said yes.
We went, the kids played on the swings, we ate cookie dough standing up, talked about how terrible most nut-free baked goods taste, and how the swim coach always forgets to send out the practice schedule. We exchanged texts, and we’re doing it again next week. It’s not a big best friend thing, not a lifelong bond. It’s just 20 minutes of talking to another adult who gets the weird little daily struggles I have. That’s enough, right? I used to think I needed a whole group of mom friends who do everything with me, come to birthday parties, go on vacation together. Now I’m fine with having a bunch of small, one-context friends. I have one I only see at the dog park, we chat for 10 minutes while our dogs chase each other, that’s it. I have another I only talk to at karate pick up, we complain about the tiny parking lot together. That counts, even if it’s not the perfect village everyone posts about.
I also stopped screening people to make sure they’re a perfect match. I used to avoid talking to moms who parent differently than me, or vote differently, or like different things. But now I figure, we don’t have to talk about that stuff. We can just talk about car line and cookie dough and how our kids refuse to eat anything but chicken nuggets. It doesn’t have to be deep to be good.
I still have awkward moments, still stand there after drop off with nothing to say sometimes, still leave group playdates feeling a little out of place. I don’t have a big group of closest mom friends to call when my kid is sick and I need to run to the pharmacy. But it’s not because I’m bad at making friends, and it’s not because everyone else is already taken. It’s just harder now, because the automatic community that used to exist for new moms doesn’t really exist anymore. We have to build it in small bits, instead of waiting for it to happen. Right now, the small bits are working for me. We’ll see where it goes.
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