Why It's So Hard to Make Mom Friends When You Work Full Time
And what to do about it
I thought I was ready to go back to work. I had reliable child care, my work pants zipped up again (some of them at least), baby was sleeping a decent chunk of hours. But what I wasn’t expecting was that nobody warned me that going back to work would mean losing my mom friends.
It was slow too, so I didn’t really notice at first. The Tuesday morning stroller walks I couldn't make anymore. The WhatsApp group that kept planning things at 10am on a Wednesday. The coffee dates that kept getting rescheduled until we both stopped trying. By the time I was back at my desk full time, the community I had just started building felt like it was slipping through my fingers. I felt FOMO, sadness, guilt over not trying harder. I felt like I had failed at building my village! And I really needed one.
If you're reading this, I'm guessing you know exactly what I'm talking about.
So why is this so hard? And why does nobody talk about it?
The mom world is built around mat leave hours and early postpartum
Most mom groups, classes, and communities are designed for moms who are home during the day. Story time at the library? 10am Thursday. Stroller fitness? 9am Tuesday. Mommy and me yoga? Wednesday morning. If you work a regular job, you are automatically excluded from most of the spaces where mom friendships are supposed to form.
It's not intentional. I don’t think someone sat down somewhere and decided to leave working moms out. It's just that the whole industry of early motherhood assumes you're available during business hours. And if you're not, you're kind of on your own. And I was here too!
The newborn phase is the only time anyone reaches out
There's a window right after you have a baby when people pour in. Meal trains, check-ins, visits. You're connected to other new moms through prenatal classes, your pediatrician's waiting room, the neighborhood Facebook group. That connection feels real. It IS real.
But it's also tied to such a short moment in time. Once the babies stop being cute little potatoes that aren’t running around causing chaos, the glue that held the group together starts to dissolve. The shared experience of surviving the newborn phase fades, and without something to replace it, the friendships fade too. I don’t know about you, but trying to work full time and having a baby put me in survival mode all over again!
For working moms, that window closes even faster because going back to work pulls you out of the spaces where those early connections happen.
You don't have time to work for your friendships
Making friends as an adult is hard on its own, you have to be super intentional! You have to keep showing up to the same place, at the same time, and see the same people until something clicks. That's hard when you're working full-time, managing a household, and parenting a small human who needs everything from you. It can also be AWKWARD.
The mom friend you met at that one Saturday event? You both meant to follow up. You both got buried in the week. And then three months went by.
It's not that you don't care. It's that the logistics of building a friendship on top of everything else you're already carrying feel impossible.
It gets lonelier the older your kid gets
Here's the part that surprised me most. I assumed it would get easier. Once Luca wasn't a newborn, once we were past the hardest phase, once I found my rhythm at work again, surely the social stuff would sort itself out.
It didn't. If anything, it got quieter. The pediatrician's appointments got less frequent. The new parent classes were behind us. And the mom groups I found were still meeting on Tuesday mornings. Experiencing a whole different kind of tiredness.
The working mom loneliness doesn't peak in the newborn phase. It peaks later, when everyone assumes you've got it figured out.
What actually helps
The only thing that has worked for me is finding a community that is built around your actual life. Not one that tolerates your schedule. One that is designed for it. That means events after 5pm and on weekends. Virtual options for the weeks when leaving the house is not happening. And someone else handling all the planning so you can just show up and actually be present.
It also means finding women who get it. Who don't need you to explain why you missed the Tuesday morning thing again. Who are navigating the exact same tension between loving their work and wishing they had more time for everything else.
That kind of community exists. It takes a little more intention to find it, but it exists. And if you're in the South Bay, that's exactly what we're building at Working Mama Co. A membership community where everything is designed around the fact that you have a job, a life, a kid, and approximately zero free time on Tuesday mornings.
We have events coming up this May — all after 5pm, all planned for you. Come find your people.
Come find your people. We'd love to have you.
