The term “mom friend” has become popular enough that we’ve likely all heard it at some point… but what is a “mom friend”? To be general: I’d say she’s the friend who has, historically, clung onto responsibility and forethought and who is expected to find joy in this assumed responsibility. To be painfully specific: she’ll herd the troop, call the uber, keep any (random, but necessary) toiletries on the go, hold your hair, and have all the answers – especially in times of “crisis”. You guessed it: she’s the mom. Everyone deserves the love and protection offered by a mom friend. This isn’t about that, though. This is about what the mom friend deserves.
Mom friends often get overlooked. Their good deeds are perceived as a coincidence rather than choice. Typically, there’s one mom friend per friend group, and at the very least, one per social outing. Depending on the context, I often become the identifiable mom friend (hint: it’s easy to be the mom friend in a social group that Lives Life Out Loud). I’ll be the one to walk other girls home, check-in, advocate on their behalf, etc. To speak for me – I am not confused by my own tendencies to become the mom friend. Frankly, it’s directly linked to nerves. As a product of competing for social anxieties, a crutch I use when navigating group events is channelling the least-social, anti-party mode I can offer. In other words, I lean into nurturing. Is this an awful or harmful crutch? Certainly not for my friends. However, is there potential harm to the mom friend herself?
I suggest there’s this potential harm for a few reasons. Firstly, what happens to the mom friend when she never lets go? If someone is only occupied by the pursuit to protect or prevent, the pursuit to experience and create fun becomes counter-intuitive and unrealistic. As the mom friend, using your hyper-sense of responsibility as a crutch may seem to protect the people around you, but it’s likely also to protect yourself from the unknown. We create boundaries between us and the unknown by focusing on others’ experiences, on the logistics, on the eventual or possible aftermath. This is a brutal thing to realize, but it’s also freeing. At least in this mom friend’s experience.
Another value to letting go is giving others the opportunity to pick up where you’ve left off. In other words: allow your friends to be the mom for the night! By giving others a chance to protect you or nurture you, you allow yourself to be vulnerable to new experiences, and allow them to find new ways to show they care. We can all afford to strengthen our skills, and the more one friend picks up, the less the others get to carry.
Aside from that, responsibility is great. Nurturing, protecting, and caring are all lovely traits – and typically, very necessary. But that doesn’t mean we can’t measure or evaluate our relationships with responsibility. Sometimes, the greatest responsibility is the responsibility you have to yourself to live your life, take the pressure off, and see what comes from it.
It’s time mom friends nurture their own experience, too.