Ask a new mother about her mothers group and she will either break into a smile or will burst into tears. They promise so much – new friends, like-minded women on the same learning curve as you, coffee mornings and long chats. And yet they don’t always deliver. Sometimes they can be bitchy, competitive (just what you need when you are feeling like the only thing you may wear ever again is a tracksuit!) or full of women you simply don’t connect with. Ultimately, mothers groups are women thrown together just because they had a baby and they happen to live in the same suburb.

I struck gold with my group. They are insanely ace. A decade on, nine of us still meet for dinner every month and manage to get away for a weekend each year (in fact, we all agree that mothers group became much more fun when we no longer had to bring the kids along). The group has seen each other through really, really good times and really, really bad. I need to stress the ‘really’ in that last sentence because some of what has happened in my own group is like what happens in Fiona Higgins’ new novel, The Mothers’ Group. But without the neat conclusion. Continue reading →