Mummy Fight Clubs

Hands up, I admit it, I couldn’t go the distance, couldn’t hack the pace, I just wasn’t strong enough. I am a mother-and-toddler group drop out, so sue me – actually scrap that last bit, the ATM machine laughs maniacally when I venture within 20ft of it.
I went to two different mother-and-toddler groups when my eldest child was younger and thought I had been magically transported through time to the playground of my primary school circa 1980. There was cat fighting, dirty looks, back stabbing and much judging of parental techniques and physical appearances.
My first experience was none too great. I may as well have stood up and admitted I was a card-carrying member of a Satanic cult when I mentioned I was a working mother.
The second group I went to was a gathering of level seven yummy mummys. I could hardly breathe the air was so thick with Channel No5 and my retinas where frequently burned when the sun happened to hit overly large diamond rings or the go-faster stripes on their designer prams.
One of the mothers was a fully-fledged member of the breastfeeding mafia. When I informed her that I had bottlefed my oldest son, after having great trouble feeding him myself, I know she felt an urge to take me out to the hall and beat me around the head with her umbrella. Fair play to her she fought the violent urge but informed me gently that I had poisoned my child and that he would grow up to be tres stupid.
The idea that these mothers' groups are meant to be a place where sleep-deprived, vomit-smeared mums can swap advice on how to get your baby to sleep is, in my opinion, laughable.
If you're worried that your daughter is 14 months old and still crawling instead of walking? A better mother than you will boost your anxiety by bragging that her son was walking at eight months.
Your son's vocabulary is a bit limited and you think he might have a hearing problem? The best mum in the world will tell you her 11-month-old uttered his first full sentence yesterday.
And now, my theory has become proper fact. An Australian study has found mother-and-toddler groups can make mothers feel even more guilty than usual by allowing mothers to compare themselves, and their children, to others and find faults.
The study, a proper one by a fancy psychologist, showed that playgroups reinforced the ‘good mother syndrome’, which is how society expects an ideal mother to be.
From my own personal experience I’ve always thought that mother-and-toddlers groups should be renamed fight clubs and are places where women can go to beat each other up over parenting techniques, make each other feel guilty, judge one another on appearances, laugh at other mums who can’t shift the baby weight, backstab, bitch and ridicule. That and let their kids play together.