On January 1, Ashley Tisdale rang in the new year by publishing an essay via The Cut detailing her decision to leave a “toxic” mum group. Titled Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group.
If you haven’t yet read it, consider this the brief version. Ashley Tisdale, former Disney star and now a mother of two with husband Christopher French, has published a candid essay reflecting on her decision to step away from a mum group that no longer felt supportive and had begun to feel quietly exclusionary.
In it, she peels back the polished image of celebrity motherhood to reveal something familiar: being left out. Not in an overt or confrontational way, but in the subtle, emotionally bruising way many women recognise instantly.
A glance at Tisdale’s Instagram suggests this is no ordinary playdate circle. The group is widely believed to include Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore and Meghan Trainor, who have all been pictured together on multiple occasions, including a mums’ weekend away in August 2022, which Trainor captioned, “I have mom friends🥹 and I love them💖.”
Hillary Duff’s husband, Matthew Koma, has since chimed into the discourse, all but proving his famous wife is who Ashley is talking about.
Naturally, this all adds a layer of intrigue. Even at the highest levels of fame, it seems, social dynamics remain surprisingly universal.
In the essay, Tisdale explains that she was seeking connection in the early months of motherhood, gravitating towards women in the same stage of life. She writes:
“I needed to talk to someone else who related to what I was going through: the mood swings, the late nights, saying goodbye to who I used to be and getting to know my daughter and the new person I was becoming. So I felt lucky when my friend brought together a group of new moms that she knew.”
At first, it felt like exactly what she needed. “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 writes. “But over time, I began to wonder whether that was really true.”
The shift was gradual. Invitations stopped. Plans happened without her. She recalls being left out of a gathering organised while she was there, adding, “I still don’t get why I wasn’t at the girl hang that they all planned at my daughter’s birthday.” Eventually, the pattern became clear. “This group had a pattern of leaving someone out. And that someone had become me.”
Ashley continued, “All of a sudden, I was in high school again, feeling totally lost as to what I was doing ‘wrong’ to be left out.”
While Tisdale never named names, readers were quick to speculate. Fans noticed that she unfollowed Duff and Moore on Instagram around the same time. Tisdale and her representatives have since claimed that the essay refers to a different group of friends entirely, though many remain unconvinced.
Adding fuel to the speculation, Hilary Duff’s husband, Grammy-winning musician Matthew Koma, shared a mock cover of The Cut with his face photoshopped over Ashley’s, a pointed nod to the essay she had written.
Koma captioned the Instagram story, “When you’re the most self obsessed tone deaf person on Earth, other mums tend to shift focus to their actual toddlers.”
For now, it appears the mum-group fallout is far from over.
