To an outsider, the inner workings of the average parenting group might seem strange. That’s often because they can become their own separate universes.
After ‘High School Musical’ actress Ashley French wrote an essay earlier this year about being excluded from her “toxic” mom group of famous friends, she received a massive outpouring of support from moms around the country who said they had similar experiences.
“When people use that term toxic friend-group, what they’re talking about is a classic clique,” says Noëlle Santorelli, a clinical psychologist in Atlanta, who specializes in relational aggression including mean-girl dynamics among teens and adults. “Cliques have hierarchies and social rules.”
Posts like this surface in online parenting communities because there’s a hierarchy and a type of groupthink happening that you don’t necessarily encounter elsewhere.
Santorelli points to something called matrescence as the reason. It’s a psychological transformation that occurs in women when they become mothers, and it shares characteristics with adolescence—a period when we undergo significant social and emotional growth but remain highly vulnerable.
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Within these groups, “It feels so hot and heavy, like that ‘Ohmigod, you’re my best friend,’ when you move into your college dorm and meet new friends,” Santorelli adds.
‘High School Musical’s’ French described a similar feeling in the essay. “By the time we started getting together for playdates and got the group chat going, I was certain that I’d found my village,” she wrote.
But at the same time, the woman felt left out.
“All of a sudden, I was in high school again, feeling totally lost as to what I was doing ‘wrong.’”
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When it comes to parents’ relationship with their children, licensed marriage and family therapist Darlene Lancer says we can ask ourselves these questions to help determine if moms and dads are being toxic:
- Do they tend to overreact or create a scene?
- Do they use emotional blackmail?
- Do they make frequent or unreasonable demands?
- Do they try to control their children? (“My way or the highway"?)
- Do they criticize or compare their children?
- Do they listen to their children with interest?
- Do they manipulate, use guilt, or play the victim?
- Do they blame or attack their children?
- Do they take responsibility and apologize?
- Do they respect their children’s physical and emotional boundaries?
- Do they disregard their children’s feelings and needs?
- Do they envy or compete with their children?
On the flip side, “The definition of a healthy parent is one who is emotionally mature enough to own his own psychological material, so that it doesn’t get projected onto the child,” says Andrea Mathews, a therapist from Birmingham, Alabama, United States.
“Emotional maturity means that the parent can own his own emotions and use emotions as his own internal messaging system—which facilitates self-awareness.”
Self-awareness, the therapist explains, means having a strong understanding of yourself and your emotions. It also involves having a healthy emotional relationship with yourself—one that includes self-empathy, self-love, and behaviors that care for and honor who you are.
As a result, a parent is better able to manage their own emotions and experiences instead of projecting them onto others. This helps them build relationships that are free of unhealthy boundaries and toxic behavior.
