Do you think the popular girls tend to have the popular moms?

[Anonymous]

I consider myself to be pretty petty and I have a fair amount of free time, but I could never, ever spend this much time thinking about my kids’ friends’ parents.

[Anonymous]

It’s not being petty, it’s about getting off feeling powerful when you can exclude or include someone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s not being petty, it’s about getting off feeling powerful when you can exclude or include someone.

Agreed. I don't really understand why people enjoy this type of power. It reminds me of war for women or something.

I have a love hate relationship with these people. I like the standards that people like this set for themselves at least up to a certain level where you can tell they care about their appearance and what they do in the world and how they spend their time on social skills and other skills. But then it reaches a point of absurdity over small issues that others do and then the meanness is so off-putting to me. It has a tipping point for my admiration. And that's when I fall off being in good standing with these people. I'm drawn to the good parts of them and repelled against the power need. I've spent my life trying to figure out how much I want people like that in my life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just elbowing my way in to say that this whole Popular Mom/Popular Girls thing is alive and well in public schools and begins in K and ramps up precipitously reaching crescendo by freshman year HS.

Starts with “right” activities (swim or country clubs), then moves into cool girl sports and specific teams and coaches, then to travel sports (bonus here is aura of exclusivity) and the bespoke childhood of the privileged thus begins. Next is admittance to the almighty AAP program (further segregation with school choice for MS). Travel sports ramp up so more sharing hotel rooms with other popular girls and parents, taking trips over Thanksgiving with just the other families on travel team sport.

Enter encouragement to be mini teens by around grades 5-6. Boy craziness begins and everything that goes with this phase. Consider that by junior year of HS these girls are behaving in a way you might recall some college freshman did back in your day. Pre-gaming at someone’s house before a football game, drunken sleepovers afterwards, hangovers, vaping, sex, experimenting with everything - moms will host parties, buy booze, “chaperone” beach week and proudly proclaim, “At least no one is driving drunk.”

Agree. The boldes especially resonates with me. In 5th/6th my kid was still on. The young side in terms of actual age but also interests. Some of her friends started with the social media, had iPhones, were “dating” and acting much more mature. The parents enabled that from what I could see.

These are now the girls going to school half dressed, with bfs, having sex, and drinking alcohol. They are also, almost to a one, mean kids.

Agreed. The mean girls are more likely the ones who are reallly into being popular and want the best mate of all or really into being counter cultural. The ones who have a balance in life are not usually mean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just elbowing my way in to say that this whole Popular Mom/Popular Girls thing is alive and well in public schools and begins in K and ramps up precipitously reaching crescendo by freshman year HS.

Starts with “right” activities (swim or country clubs), then moves into cool girl sports and specific teams and coaches, then to travel sports (bonus here is aura of exclusivity) and the bespoke childhood of the privileged thus begins. Next is admittance to the almighty AAP program (further segregation with school choice for MS). Travel sports ramp up so more sharing hotel rooms with other popular girls and parents, taking trips over Thanksgiving with just the other families on travel team sport.

Enter encouragement to be mini teens by around grades 5-6. Boy craziness begins and everything that goes with this phase. Consider that by junior year of HS these girls are behaving in a way you might recall some college freshman did back in your day. Pre-gaming at someone’s house before a football game, drunken sleepovers afterwards, hangovers, vaping, sex, experimenting with everything - moms will host parties, buy booze, “chaperone” beach week and proudly proclaim, “At least no one is driving drunk.”

These two groups you mention are almost always entirely different people. No family is going from travel sports and AAP to vaping and moms hosting booze parties. They might enjoy work hard play hard and be competitive with AAP but not a ton of rule breaking or parties all the time. They don't have the time for it. The party people are the ones obsessed with popularity and are competitive in this sphere but also tend to be welcoming with the purpose of being more popular and having better parties.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand all the meanness here. Who cares what moms are friends with whom and their daughters? I’m sure you all have friends and your kids do too? What makes your chosen social group fine and theirs “mean” Live your own life and stop ruminating about what others are doing

For instance, this summer my child is in a group of kids for an activity who are all kind and having fun and have been friends for years until this one person shows up who makes it a point of excluding someone as part of their "play". Often it is my child out of jealousy or my child doesn't have whatever this person wants from them or whatever. This kid joined this particular circle a couple of years ago and it just hasn't been the same since. When they do want something from my child they are as sweet as pie and love to manipulate situations to come across as just kind and caring enough often for show in front of adults. After 2 years of this my child just puts no effort into a friendship with this person anymore. It's just tiring for a child to deal with constant put downs in public with friends even if they don't care about this person. The other kids were fine with everyone to begin with and have no intention of making enemies with anyone. The exclusion is specific in order to exclude one or two people who don't trigger this person and allow them to gain status despite nothing actually happening to them on any given day or them showing any real skill other than harping on another person. Why should the person being bullied just find all new friends and switch schools or activities just because this one person loves to put them down when there are no problems once this "popular" kid is out of the circle and no problem actually surfaced during an activity? It's annoying to not really be able to call it out for what it is. Annoying mean behavior. It's like having a child in a group who does something annoying for the entire group all the time that everyone just puts up with to get along but the person with the annoying behavior claims that their behavior instead of being annoying is actually a sign of popularity and they have the right to be negative and mean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not being petty, it’s about getting off feeling powerful when you can exclude or include someone.

No one feels this way. This is your insecurity thinking they do

They absolutely do. There are real mean people out there who are insecure. That doesn't mean there aren't others who just ignore people because they have other people they want to interact with. Both can exist and do exist.

Mean girls are a real thing and people do obsess over how to be mean to others. This is how women "make war".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I have found is that the mean moms were the ones who were unpopular in high school and want more than anything for their daughters to be popular. They are the worst.

Nope. They were the butterfaced mean girls raising butterfaced mean girls.

I think they think that meanness in conversation is a skill to cultivate and leads to better choices. And maybe it is. Not one I'm really interested in cultivating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand all the meanness here. Who cares what moms are friends with whom and their daughters? I’m sure you all have friends and your kids do too? What makes your chosen social group fine and theirs “mean” Live your own life and stop ruminating about what others are doing

For instance, this summer my child is in a group of kids for an activity who are all kind and having fun and have been friends for years until this one person shows up who makes it a point of excluding someone as part of their "play". Often it is my child out of jealousy or my child doesn't have whatever this person wants from them or whatever. This kid joined this particular circle a couple of years ago and it just hasn't been the same since. When they do want something from my child they are as sweet as pie and love to manipulate situations to come across as just kind and caring enough often for show in front of adults. After 2 years of this my child just puts no effort into a friendship with this person anymore. It's just tiring for a child to deal with constant put downs in public with friends even if they don't care about this person. The other kids were fine with everyone to begin with and have no intention of making enemies with anyone. The exclusion is specific in order to exclude one or two people who don't trigger this person and allow them to gain status despite nothing actually happening to them on any given day or them showing any real skill other than harping on another person. Why should the person being bullied just find all new friends and switch schools or activities just because this one person loves to put them down when there are no problems once this "popular" kid is out of the circle and no problem actually surfaced during an activity? It's annoying to not really be able to call it out for what it is. Annoying mean behavior. It's like having a child in a group who does something annoying for the entire group all the time that everyone just puts up with to get along but the person with the annoying behavior claims that their behavior instead of being annoying is actually a sign of popularity and they have the right to be negative and mean.

Well sure, KIDS do this stuff. It’s unavoidable and I don’t think it aligns with who is “popular.” Girls get the most grief for it but boys ime have horrific friend group crack ups in middle school. That happens no matter what the parents do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not being petty, it’s about getting off feeling powerful when you can exclude or include someone.

No one feels this way. This is your insecurity thinking they do

They absolutely do. There are real mean people out there who are insecure. That doesn't mean there aren't others who just ignore people because they have other people they want to interact with. Both can exist and do exist.

Mean girls are a real thing and people do obsess over how to be mean to others. This is how women "make war".

The only people that are obsessing seem to be the ones that are giving these ridiculous long winded narratives about how they felt excluded this one time. I just don’t get the drama. If someone doesn’t seem to want to be your friend, move on. There are plenty of people in the world, school, neighborhood, wherever, to be friends with. Moms have no power, even “popular” moms. Their kids have no power either. This is fictional

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not being petty, it’s about getting off feeling powerful when you can exclude or include someone.

No one feels this way. This is your insecurity thinking they do

Please, creating cliques and inclusion/exclusion is very intentional. Even immigrants from Holland clued in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ok, this is one anecdote, but one of the "popular" or it girls or whatever in my DD's middle school class all wore matching skirts to a dance. I assumed the kids came up with this but it turns out a mom suggested it, ordered it, decided who was on the list to get the skirt, etc.

The moms of these girls all hang out and some of the moms are trying to push their kids into the group. It's super weird but I don't think that uncommon so to answer OP, yes, I personally think there is a mother-daughter correlation in many cases.

this happened for Halloween in my neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you mean to tell me that there were no out groups in Holland? That sounds amazing, OP. Tell me more.

not OP. I think there's s a saying in Holland that the tall grass gets cut meaning, don't stick out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not being petty, it’s about getting off feeling powerful when you can exclude or include someone.

No one feels this way. This is your insecurity thinking they do

They absolutely do. There are real mean people out there who are insecure. That doesn't mean there aren't others who just ignore people because they have other people they want to interact with. Both can exist and do exist.

Mean girls are a real thing and people do obsess over how to be mean to others. This is how women "make war".

The only people that are obsessing seem to be the ones that are giving these ridiculous long winded narratives about how they felt excluded this one time. I just don’t get the drama. If someone doesn’t seem to want to be your friend, move on. There are plenty of people in the world, school, neighborhood, wherever, to be friends with. Moms have no power, even “popular” moms. Their kids have no power either. This is fictional

Because it is intentionally not fun and intentionally meant to pull you away from friends you have and supplant you like an AP does with a spouse. People have power and they will use it against jerks who feel they are entitled to anything they want regardless of the consequences. If you are one of them trying to justify your behavior look out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That is an American thing in a small private school with a smaller class size and people with money.

Not typical in big American public schools.

You’re probably at a snobby school with ultra high net worth families that have moms that don’t have careers. When not busy with a career, both men and women can become petty and immature.

I sent my kid to privates that were not snobby, and we didn’t have this happening.

I’d switch schools and not tell your kid they have to deal with jerks like that. Because, no, they do not have to accept that behavior.