In recent celebrity news, Ashley Tisdale, now known professionally as Ashley French, made waves when she wrote in an essay for The Cut that she recently left her mom group of friends. In addition to that, she unfollowed Mandy Moore and Hilary Duff on Instagram. She wrote, ‘Most of us had been pregnant through the early pandemic, so we missed out on the activities where you meet other expectant mothers. But finally, we were able to be together, and our kids were able to be together, and it all felt right.’

Tisdale had assumed she found her “village” in the mom group, which had included Moore, Duff, and Meghan Trainor, but things took a turn after she realized she’d been left out of a couple of group hangs — and only found out about them from Instagram. She continued, ‘Another time, at one of the mom’s dinner parties, I realized where I sat with her — which was at the end of the table, far from the rest of the women. I was starting to feel frozen out of the group, noticing every way that they seemed to exclude me. At first, I tried not to take things personally. It’s not like people aren’t allowed to get together without me — and maybe there were perfectly good reasons that I hadn’t been invited.’

After a while, Tisdale noticed she was getting invited less and less. She started feeling like she wasn’t cool enough to be in the group and left like she was in high school again. Eventually, she texted her mom friends to let them know she was officially leaving the group. She wrote, ‘This is too high school for me and I don’t want to take part in it anymore. To be clear, I never considered the moms to be bad people. (Maybe one). But I do think our group dynamic stopped being healthy and positive — for me anyway. But from the feedback I’ve received since I started talking about this, I now know I’m far from the only mother who’s been brought to tears by members of a group that’s supposed to lift everyone up. Why, I wondered, is it so scary to talk about this? Motherhood has enough challenges without having to wonder if the people around you are on your side. You deserve to go through motherhood with people who actually, you know, like you.’

Even though Tisdale never mentioned any of her former friends by name, the message was certainly loud and clear. That was especially true after her social media activity in her unfollowing Moore and Duff. To be totally honest, I was so disappointed in knowing that someone like Hilary Duff was part of the “problem” in a female friendship lasting. Throughout her entire career, she was known to be the unproblematic one. During her days on Disney in the 2000’s, she was a popular figure for young girls to look up to.

Then again, people change and grow up. Anyone can be a villain in someone else’s story. And to be fair, Tisdale never villainized anyone in her former friend group, with the exception of one. She just wrote they weren’t good friends and she did what felt right by leaving the group for good. As a mom, I can agree with her decision. Even if it wasn’t for the fact that it was a mom group, it’d still be the right decision to leave a toxic environment that, as a woman, you don’t feel comfortable, safe, or valued in. In the aftermath of Tisdale’s revelation on her toxic friend group, one member certainly didn’t seem to be too happy. Sami Ryan, a clothing designer, took to her Instagram Story to repost a video of a man opening up his front doors and mouthing the words to Megan Thee Stallion’s braggadocios rap anthem “Her.” As the lyrics go: ‘I don’t care if these bitches don’t like me, ’cause, like, I’m pretty as fuck. Just the other day, I heard a ho say. Matter of fact, what could a ho say? With a face like this and a bitch this paid, shit, what could a ho say?’

Since Tisdale’s essay on The Cut was published, her rep spoke up, stating that there was “zero truth to what online ‘detectives’ think they’ve cracked, especially since the piece wasn’t even about Mandy Moore, Hilary Duff or Meghan Trainor like they’re assuming.” They also shut down rumours that the falling out had to do with Tisdale’s political stance, noting that she’s a registered Democrat.

Generally speaking, mother or not, female friendships can become toxic due to ingrained cultural pressures for women to be nurturing (leading to suppressed conflict and resentment), socialized competition/jealousy, lack of clear boundaries, and unspoken rules that create exclusion, often exacerbated by insecurity, life stage changes, and poor communication, making it hard to address issues directly. This creates dynamics of manipulation, one-sided effort, and emotional drain, even when friendships start with proximity rather than genuine connection. To break it down more thoroughly:

Common Causes of Toxicity in Female Friendships

• Socialization & Cultural Norms: Women are taught to be caregivers and prioritize harmony, which discourages boundary-setting and direct conflict, causing resentment to build.

• Competition & Jealousy: Insecurity can fuel rivalry over attention, success, or partners, leading to sabotage, undermining, and diminishing another’s achievements.

• Unspoken Rules & Exclusion: Hidden expectations about behavior or roles within a group can lead to painful exclusion and confusion for those who don’t know the “rules”.

• Poor Communication: Avoiding difficult conversations allows grievances to fester, leading to passive aggression, passive-aggressive behavior, or sudden blow-ups.

• Lack of Boundaries: Difficulty saying “no” or enforcing personal limits can lead to emotional exhaustion and one-sided relationships.

• Proximity vs. Connection: Friendships formed out of convenience (like at school or work) may lack deep compatibility, revealing destructive patterns as time goes on. 

Signs a Friendship is Toxic 

• Feeling drained, stressed, or negative after interactions.

• Experiencing constant criticism, dismissal, or manipulation.

• One-sided effort in maintaining the connection.

• Friends gossiping about you or sabotaging your successes.

• Feeling like you have to hide parts of yourself or compete. 

Why It Feels Especially Hard for Women

• “Tend-and-Befriend”: A natural urge to nurture can make it harder to disengage from unhealthy friendships.

• De-prioritization: Platonic friendships are often secondary to romantic ones in cultural narratives, despite their importance.

• Internalized Insecurity: Social pressures can make women project their insecurities onto others, leading to competitive behaviors. 

I can only speak from experience, but I can honestly say that navigating through friendships as a woman, especially as a mother, is fucking hard; almost next to impossible, especially as a mother of a child living with a disability. It’s so exhausting that you don’t feel like you even have what it takes to be a good friend to another woman. To add to it, as an autism mom, it’s hard to watch someone else’s child or the same age as yours hit milestones that your child hasn’t yet. The mom friends that I do have are very understanding and empathetic. They treat me and my “situation” as justifiably for exactly what it is. Every aspect of motherhood has its hurdle. My son’s autism is mine.

Before I became a mother, I had a core group of female friends. They each had unique qualities about them that drew me closer to them. These friendships lasted years. They were the loves my life. They all brought joy in my life in their own individual ways. At some points along the way, we each grew apart. There were great misunderstandings and conflicts involved. There was drama involved; there was anger; there were tears. But most of all, there was heartbreak. I’m not even talking about a friend group, but individually so.

Two things can coexist. People can be toxic and sometimes that’s the reason you outgrow them. I was the problem, or maybe my female friends’ toxic behaviours were the problem. No matter the case, It’s absolutely fair to normalize pointing out toxic behavior because there is a difference in “not fitting in” and a group of people being toxic. Not everyone is going to click the same way with everyone else. In Tisdale’s case, there seemed to have had a “mean girl” in the group. This is universal to women’s friendship groups in general – mom or not. While I do understand wanting your kids to be around people that align with your values,, what does it say about her character when you don’t feel like you can be yourself around the people you call friends?

The high school bullshit that Tisdale spoke of in her essay happens everywhere. There always has to be a woman or child who wants to feel superior and excludes others it’s sad and pathetic. In a nutshell, when it comes to female friendships, life is high school, except with bigger stakes. For years, I had an entire group of friends, women AND men, who didn’t seem like they moved on from their high school years despite the fact that they were already in their 30s by that point. Hanging out with them became excruciatingly boring because I was couldn’t learn anything new by being around them. All I’d hear was them reminiscing on their teen years. There was one person in particular who continuously bullied me. This person’s toxic behaviour lasted for years until that behaviour became harmful to my own self. The person that I thought was one of the closest people to me in the world made me feel the worst.

Since the publishing of Tisdale’s blog post on The Cut, Hilary Duff’s husband, musician Matthew Koma, responded by posting on Instagram. In a Story, he wrote, ‘When You’re The Most Self-Obsessed Tone Deaf Person On Earth, Other Moms Tend To Shift Focus To Their Actual Toddlers,’ alongside a photoshopped image of his face over Tisdale’s. ‘Read my interview with @thecut. A Mom Group Tell All Through a Father’s Eyes.’ This was a very shallow, unnecessary move that Koma made, and it told me everything I needed to know; which was that Tisdale was absolutely right – it WAS high school (still is), and she was right to leave the group. This is a man who can’t take criticism even when a name isn’t mentioned, and if he thought this was an appropriate thing to do to defend his wife, it wasn’t it by any means.

Earlier, I mentioned that Duff was the least problematic, drama-free Disney alum of them all. She had a clean image and was someone many young girls looked up to and aspired to be in the 2000’s,especially during her Lizzie McGuire days. When I first read about the article my initial reaction was maybe Tisdale’s personality just didn’t vibe with theirs and shrugged it off as a simple fact that they weren’t her people; but then Koma’s social media activity confirmed the high school mentality and toxicity she wrote about. It wasn’t even HIS drama to get himself involved in.

While Duff had a squeaky clean image in her younger years, particularly her teen years, that was all it was – an image. Her public image, however, didn’t match how she was in reality. She famously got Lalaine, her Lizzie McGuire co-star, fired from the show after her music was featured in the series and Duff felt that her spotlight was being taken away. Lalaine, who played Duff’s best friend Miranda, didn’t appear in the last 6 episodes of the series nor the theatrical movie. The official reason for her absence was that she left to work on her musical aspirations, but since then, Lalaine revealed the true reason for her absence. More recently, Frankie Muniz, who co-starred with Duff on 2002’s Agent Cody Banks, revealed that he hadn’t seen Duff in over 20 years as their friendship was fractured following her mother’s interference in the casting decision for the film.

All this happened during the years that Duff would’ve attended high school had she been a “regular girl”. Now she’s in her late 30s. She’s a married mother of 4. She has a career that’s thriving. She’s on top of the world, and yet, nothing seems to have changed when it comes down to her behaviour and treatment of others. Ironically, Duff was featured in an anti-bullying PSA about 20 years ago or so. For the public, as well as her fans everywhere, she represented kindness. And yet, behind closed doors, she was nothing short of a mean girl. She was the Regina George to all the Cady Herons who ever dared to stand in her way.

Don’t we all love it when a man sticks his nose in where it absolutely doesn’t belong? While I’m all for a husband defending his wife, I don’t support, nor do I ever tolerate, pettiness such as the one Koma showcased in his response to Tisdale’s article. It was in poor taste for him to get himself involved in the discussion of female friendships. And that’s never to say that Tisdale herself couldn’t be problematic herself; because she most certainly could be. It was just funny that Koma called Tisdale out for apparently having the emotional maturity of a 10 year old when what he did by making that post showed a level of maturity of a 10 year old.

Christy Carlson Romano, another Disney alum who starred in the 2000’s classic Even Steven’s alongside Shia LaBeouf, had her own choice of words on the matter. While discussing Tisdale’s essay, said in an Instagram video, ‘I don’t identify as a celebrity. I think I’m a public person, but I don’t ever go around calling myself a celeb. I think that mom groups are really important to people when they first have their baby. I think it aligns you with a certain kind of tribe to help you get through postpartum hormones and stuff like that. I think it’s really great, [and] that’s why mommy-and-me classes exist. You can have friends[hips] with the moms, but if the kids don’t get along, sometimes you end up cycling out of those friendships. That kinda sucks, but in the end, if you can make time for the people that matter to you, they should be giving back to you as much as you’re putting out. If that dynamic shifts, then just find another group of friends. But, I get it. Sometimes it gets a little crazy — and then you write an article about it.’

There was absolutely nothing wrong in Tisdale’s article on her friendship breakup. She merely did what she was asked to do, which was write about her experiences. Many women could relate to what she wrote. Many women experienced such scrutiny and isolation at the hands of other women who they thought were friends – mothers or not. I know I resonated her exact words. I saw myself in her own take of friendships and the emotional toll it can bring to a woman’s heart.

The psychology of female friendships centers on deep emotional connection, support, and intimacy, driven by biology (oxytocin) and socialization, often prioritizing “tend-and-befriend” responses in stress. Key elements include symmetry (feeling equal), support (emotional help), and secrecy (exclusive bonding), which foster strong bonds but also make friendships vulnerable to conflict when perceived imbalances arise, like unequal effort or judgment. These relationships offer significant mental and physical health benefits but can be complex due to societal pressures and high expectations for harmony and validation. To break it down more thoroughly:

Key Psychological Themes

• Emotional Support is Paramount: Women heavily prioritize emotional support, seeking empathy, validation, and a shoulder to cry on, which builds trust and self-worth.

• Tend-and-Befriend: In stressful situations, women often activate the “tend-and-befriend” response, seeking social bonds and support from female friends, linked to the hormone oxytocin.

• The Three S’s (Symmetry, Support, Secrecy): These are core to connection. Symmetry means feeling like equals, support means giving and receiving emotional help, and secrecy creates an exclusive, intimate bond.

• Intimacy & Vulnerability: Female friendships thrive on emotional vulnerability, creating safe spaces where deep fears and concerns can be shared without judgment, enhancing connection.

• High Expectations & Complexity: Due to intense emotional investment, minor conflicts can feel like major violations, and cultural pressures for harmony can make boundary-setting difficult. 

Factors Influencing Dynamics

• Socialization: Women are often socialized to prioritize harmony, leading to difficulty with direct conflict, while simultaneously fostering deep emotional bonds.

• Perceived Imbalance: Tensions often arise from perceived imbalances in effort, a lack of reciprocity (symmetry), or judgment, which can feel like a betrayal of the friendship’s core.

• Patriarchal Influences: Some theories suggest that competition, jealousy, and drama in female friendships can stem from patriarchal structures that pit women against each other for male validation. 

Benefits of Strong Female Friendships

• Enhanced Well-being: Provide critical social resources, boosting self-worth, empowerment, and overall mental and physical health.

• Resilience: Act as a strong buffer against stress, adversity, and loneliness.

• Personal Growth: Mentorship, encouragement, and shared experiences help women navigate life’s challenges and define their identities. 

None of that matters when you, as a woman and as a mother, are surrounded by other women who aren’t good for you. Motherhood is hard enough as it is. Motherhood is the toughest job in the world. Why make it even harder? That’s exactly what Ashley Tisdale put an emphasis on in her essay. It doesn’t necessarily matter who she was talking about exactly. What matters most is the point she was trying to make. That point is that if you don’t feel like you have good people around you, whether it be Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore, or another woman in your life, it’s okay to remove yourself out of the equation. Even more so, it’s necessary. Not just for your own mental health, but that of your spouse and your children as well. As Christopher French, Tisdale’s husband, shared on Instagram following the blog post’s publishing, ‘Underrated life skill: Pausing to decide if it’s worth your energy.’ He then under The Cut‘s Instagram post, noting how “proud” he was of her for sharing her story. “I’m so proud of you 💘” he wrote. Together, they share two children – 4 year old Jupiter and 15 month old Emerson.