Bay Area Mom Cliques

[Anonymous]

We are from the west coast but never had kids in school there. In our close in suburb, we feel excluded as we are both working parents and the seems to be mom cliques in our kids school with the SAH and WAH moms, and our kids are feeling left out.

Is this a DC thing or will we see similar dyanamic in Bay area? How common are SAH parents? I feel like this is a big part simply b/c I am not able to socialize with other moms during the worn day and build those relationships. I don't think they are trying to be mean, but definitely not trying to be inclusive (I see them at pickup and class events and say high and make small talk, but the group is always making family playdates, camp coordination etc, and we are not part of that despite at least our kids and their teacher saying all our kids are friends at school).

[Anonymous]

I found there were more SAHM in the Bay Area.

[Anonymous]

I was a SAHM in SF. I had friends who worked and SAH. I did find it to sometimes be cliquish, but they have been because my kids were in the baby/toddler/prek range when parents were still sooo convinced their style of parenting was “right”. The “sanctimommy” culture is very strong there, esp in Noe Valley. Maybe for older kids it’s not as big a deal. I think if you go public it won’t be a problem.

[Anonymous]

I work. Some parents SAH. Some work from home. DD was friends with all kinds of kids and I am friends with all kinds of parents.

Disagree with the Noe Valley comment. My kid went to Alvarado.

[Anonymous]

We just moved back to the Bay Area. I became a SAHM in the process. Between being much older than most other parents + being a SAHM (especially one who retired from a big DC career) + not being a believer in the whole "organic/GMO-free/makemyowndiapersfromcottonIgrewintheyard" philosophy = me feeling like a unicorn pretty much all day, every day.

I think the key, OP, is for you to help your kids get involved in activities that they like where they can meet other kids with shared interests. Help them learn to invest in relationships based on commonalities that go deeper than geography and school assignment. Then they won't care what the school clique kids do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We just moved back to the Bay Area. I became a SAHM in the process. Between being much older than most other parents + being a SAHM (especially one who retired from a big DC career) + not being a believer in the whole "organic/GMO-free/makemyowndiapersfromcottonIgrewintheyard" philosophy = me feeling like a unicorn pretty much all day, every day.

I think the key, OP, is for you to help your kids get involved in activities that they like where they can meet other kids with shared interests. Help them learn to invest in relationships based on commonalities that go deeper than geography and school assignment. Then they won't care what the school clique kids do.

Well here in our DC suburb we do actively get kids involved in a bunch of activities, and the kids seem to be making friends though they don’t get invited to play dates much (we invite kids over often). We volunteer st school, we offer to carpool. But We do know the other parents of our kids get together as a group and have the kids have play dates often. We differ from most in that we both work full time out of the house, but not sure if we are doing something wrong or if it’s just the SAHM/WAHM meeting up often while we are off at work and just don’t think to include us?

So west coast would be more inclusive from your experience?

[Anonymous]

I think this depends more on the demographics of the specific community than on the coast. For instance, we live in the inner SF East Bay (Oakland/Berkeley). Most families with school-aged kids in our city are dual income, and most have both parents working 80-100% time. Play dates and gatherings are usually on the weekends. The few people I know who do SAH have a set of friends they connect with during the week, but it's a small subset of their respective neighborhoods. In contrast, we have friends in Piedmont and Fremont who have significant weekday social lives around their kids. The friend in Piedmont had a weekday mid-afternoon birthday party (which I certainly remember from when I was a kid, but have never, ever encountered in my kids' circles--always weekends!) Fremont still has half-day kinder and the friends there meet up with their kids' classmates for lunch and playdates most afternoons. I have no idea what the kids whose parents work full-time do, but I'm sure there are some and presumably they go to aftercare and aren't invited to these playdates, and certainly their parents don't have the opportunity to meet and connect with other families during this time. I think it makes a difference if that's the minority of kids vs. the majority of kids (and I'm sure it's strongly correlated with wealth and ability to SAH during those years, at least given current Bay Area housing costs--families we know with a SAHP all either bought during the recession or have the other parent in tech or another highly lucrative field.

Put another way, I think it's much easier to forge these connections if you are one of many families where both parents work full-time out of the house, and that varies by neighborhood. (My friends in DC proper are all families with two full-time working parents, though I don't know if that's the norm there or not.)

[Anonymous]

I'm in the East Bay, in a city that isn't quite what the average DCUM-er would find acceptable (think San Lorenzo/Hayward/Castro Valley area). We've had a hard time making friends outside of work/mutual acquaintances, and I think it's because we have very different types of jobs (and schedules) than people in our community or at DD's pre-school. Aside from teachers (who have somewhat different schedules than traditional office jobs), I can't think of a single couple we've met in our neighborhood or through DD's school with two parents with typical white collar jobs (e.g. weekday, 9-5). It ends up our kids' nanny does a lot of weekday playdates. On the weekends, we have a hard time scheduling playdates because everyone wants to do them at like 8am on Saturday...and we need to sleep in at least a bit after getting up early every weekday.

In other parts of the Bay Area, there are a lot of 1 income households. Or there are "super-mom" types who are working full time, being the class parent or Brownies room mother, putting their kids in every class etc. I think I'm a good parent, but I didn't grow up in a household where my parents' lives revolved around mine. And I just can't make every moment of my free time about my kids. That, more than anything, seems to be the biggest barrier to building a community with other people who have kids...honestly. I think it's okay to plan something between two families that isn't primarily about the kids (e.g. go to a restaurant that is family friendly rather than go to a park)...this doesn't seem to be a popular opinion, though, here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this depends more on the demographics of the specific community than on the coast. For instance, we live in the inner SF East Bay (Oakland/Berkeley). Most families with school-aged kids in our city are dual income, and most have both parents working 80-100% time. Play dates and gatherings are usually on the weekends. The few people I know who do SAH have a set of friends they connect with during the week, but it's a small subset of their respective neighborhoods. In contrast, we have friends in Piedmont and Fremont who have significant weekday social lives around their kids. The friend in Piedmont had a weekday mid-afternoon birthday party (which I certainly remember from when I was a kid, but have never, ever encountered in my kids' circles--always weekends!) Fremont still has half-day kinder and the friends there meet up with their kids' classmates for lunch and playdates most afternoons. I have no idea what the kids whose parents work full-time do, but I'm sure there are some and presumably they go to aftercare and aren't invited to these playdates, and certainly their parents don't have the opportunity to meet and connect with other families during this time. I think it makes a difference if that's the minority of kids vs. the majority of kids (and I'm sure it's strongly correlated with wealth and ability to SAH during those years, at least given current Bay Area housing costs--families we know with a SAHP all either bought during the recession or have the other parent in tech or another highly lucrative field.

Put another way, I think it's much easier to forge these connections if you are one of many families where both parents work full-time out of the house, and that varies by neighborhood. (My friends in DC proper are all families with two full-time working parents, though I don't know if that's the norm there or not.)

We had a friend who had a mid-week afternoon birthday party. I had never heard such a thing, and am sad to hear it would still be a thing on the west coast

That definitely deflated my hope of the more inclusive ‘hippie’ moms of California.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this depends more on the demographics of the specific community than on the coast. For instance, we live in the inner SF East Bay (Oakland/Berkeley). Most families with school-aged kids in our city are dual income, and most have both parents working 80-100% time. Play dates and gatherings are usually on the weekends. The few people I know who do SAH have a set of friends they connect with during the week, but it's a small subset of their respective neighborhoods. In contrast, we have friends in Piedmont and Fremont who have significant weekday social lives around their kids. The friend in Piedmont had a weekday mid-afternoon birthday party (which I certainly remember from when I was a kid, but have never, ever encountered in my kids' circles--always weekends!) Fremont still has half-day kinder and the friends there meet up with their kids' classmates for lunch and playdates most afternoons. I have no idea what the kids whose parents work full-time do, but I'm sure there are some and presumably they go to aftercare and aren't invited to these playdates, and certainly their parents don't have the opportunity to meet and connect with other families during this time. I think it makes a difference if that's the minority of kids vs. the majority of kids (and I'm sure it's strongly correlated with wealth and ability to SAH during those years, at least given current Bay Area housing costs--families we know with a SAHP all either bought during the recession or have the other parent in tech or another highly lucrative field.

Put another way, I think it's much easier to forge these connections if you are one of many families where both parents work full-time out of the house, and that varies by neighborhood. (My friends in DC proper are all families with two full-time working parents, though I don't know if that's the norm there or not.)

We had a friend who had a mid-week afternoon birthday party. I had never heard such a thing, and am sad to hear it would still be a thing on the west coast

That definitely deflated my hope of the more inclusive ‘hippie’ moms of California.

Being whiny won't get you brownie points over there. Either move on...or move back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are from the west coast but never had kids in school there. In our close in suburb, we feel excluded as we are both working parents and the seems to be mom cliques in our kids school with the SAH and WAH moms, and our kids are feeling left out.

Is this a DC thing or will we see similar dyanamic in Bay area? How common are SAH parents? I feel like this is a big part simply b/c I am not able to socialize with other moms during the worn day and build those relationships. I don't think they are trying to be mean, but definitely not trying to be inclusive (I see them at pickup and class events and say high and make small talk, but the group is always making family playdates, camp coordination etc, and we are not part of that despite at least our kids and their teacher saying all our kids are friends at school).

That should make you very popular

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this depends more on the demographics of the specific community than on the coast. For instance, we live in the inner SF East Bay (Oakland/Berkeley). Most families with school-aged kids in our city are dual income, and most have both parents working 80-100% time. Play dates and gatherings are usually on the weekends. The few people I know who do SAH have a set of friends they connect with during the week, but it's a small subset of their respective neighborhoods. In contrast, we have friends in Piedmont and Fremont who have significant weekday social lives around their kids. The friend in Piedmont had a weekday mid-afternoon birthday party (which I certainly remember from when I was a kid, but have never, ever encountered in my kids' circles--always weekends!) Fremont still has half-day kinder and the friends there meet up with their kids' classmates for lunch and playdates most afternoons. I have no idea what the kids whose parents work full-time do, but I'm sure there are some and presumably they go to aftercare and aren't invited to these playdates, and certainly their parents don't have the opportunity to meet and connect with other families during this time. I think it makes a difference if that's the minority of kids vs. the majority of kids (and I'm sure it's strongly correlated with wealth and ability to SAH during those years, at least given current Bay Area housing costs--families we know with a SAHP all either bought during the recession or have the other parent in tech or another highly lucrative field.

Put another way, I think it's much easier to forge these connections if you are one of many families where both parents work full-time out of the house, and that varies by neighborhood. (My friends in DC proper are all families with two full-time working parents, though I don't know if that's the norm there or not.)

We had a friend who had a mid-week afternoon birthday party. I had never heard such a thing, and am sad to hear it would still be a thing on the west coast

That definitely deflated my hope of the more inclusive ‘hippie’ moms of California.

I'm the PP of that post, and in fairness, it is the only one we've ever encountered across two kids' worth of parties. So I don't think it's much of a thing here either outside of some heavily SAH pockets. (We also found that certain areas have a lot of three-half-day-a-week or co-op preschools, while other areas have mostly full-time preschools--very reflective of where similar households may be.)

[Anonymous]

I’m in the east bay and weekday afternoon parties are rare. Our social group has a lot of SAHPs and parents who WAH at least a few days a week, and a lot of parents (mostly moms) work part time while the kids are in school. I think we have been invited to one party that was on a weekday after school.

To answer the OP, cliques are everywhere. Sometimes they’re intentionally exclusive, but sometimes they’re just a pre existing group of friends. It’s hard to break into existing groups. Also, SAHM vs working mom thing tends to boil down to schedules when it comes to play dates. IME, SAHMs want to save time when the kids and working spouse are home as family time. That’s when working parents are free to schedule play dates. It’s tricky to navigate with someone you just met. It’s doable, but you have to be optimistic, not look for insults, and be open to changing your schedule.

[Anonymous]

East coast are power women; west coast (sadly) are SAHM, especially bay area:

1. Silicon Valley is frighteningly sexist
2. Costs are more extreme -- commute, daycare, etc so it's cheaper to have a SAHP.
3. Work hours are crazy (more like NY) so unless you have family, it becomes impossible to have two WOHP.
3. Incomes are crazy (more like NY) so many families can afford SAHP.

That said, I cannot think of a single one of MY friends who don't work at all -- but it is etsy, teaching, tutoring, volunteering -- it's not a power job (except my single friends).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:East coast are power women; west coast (sadly) are SAHM, especially bay area:

1. Silicon Valley is frighteningly sexist
2. Costs are more extreme -- commute, daycare, etc so it's cheaper to have a SAHP.
3. Work hours are crazy (more like NY) so unless you have family, it becomes impossible to have two WOHP.
3. Incomes are crazy (more like NY) so many families can afford SAHP.

That said, I cannot think of a single one of MY friends who don't work at all -- but it is etsy, teaching, tutoring, volunteering -- it's not a power job (except my single friends).

1. Not true, especially compared to DC
2. True
3. Not true, unless you are a startup engineer or you are adding a crazy connote
4. True if you are in tech and include options