Ashley Tisdale is stirring up drama among her former A-list celebrity mom friends…again. The High School Musical alum and mom of 2 just called out the “ugly” and “toxic” behavior of a former mom group — two months after first making waves against them — and things are getting messy.
As a quick recap, back in November, Tisdale wrote on her By Ashley French blog that she joined a mom group after her daughter Jupiter was born in 2021. This was the “village of moms” that she needed at first, but then she felt excluded.
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“Not because the moms themselves are toxic people, but because the dynamic shifts into an ugly place with mean-girl behavior,” Tisdale, who shares Jupiter and daughter Emerson, 1, with husband Christopher French, wrote. “In my mom group, I started to notice that certain people would get talked about when they weren’t present, and not in a positive way. I realized that there were group text chains that didn’t include everyone, which led to cliques forming within the larger group.”
Ashley Tisdale at the “Wicked” Los Angeles Premiere at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on November 9, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
She claims that she saw people in her mom group hanging out together on social media without inviting her. “If a mom group consistently leaves you feeling hurt, drained, or left out, it’s not the mom group for you,” the actress wrote. “It’s no longer serving you in a way that lifts you up, and you don’t have to stay out of obligation or anything else.”
Fast forward to January, and Tisdale wrote about her former mom group again, this time for The Cut. In the lengthy essay, the mom of two wrote about feeling excluded and pushed to the side. “It took me back to an unpleasant but familiar feeling I thought I’d left behind years ago,” Tisdale said. “Here I was sitting alone one night after getting my daughter to bed, thinking, Maybe I’m not cool enough? All of a sudden, I was in high school again, feeling totally lost as to what I was doing ‘wrong’ to be left out.”
“But I’m not in high school anymore. I’m a mom,” she continued. “And it’s because I’m a mom that I couldn’t stay quiet. I kept thinking, Aren’t we supposed to be teaching our kids to speak up for themselves when their feelings are hurt? When they get left out on the playground, aren’t we supposed to teach kids to include each other? I knew that I had to speak up for myself, just like I would want my daughters to do.”
She recalls texting the group, “This is too high school for me and I don’t want to take part in it anymore.”
“It didn’t exactly go over well,” Tisdale recalled. “Some of the others tried to smooth things over. One sent flowers, then ignored me when I thanked her for them. Another tried to convince me that everyone assumed I’d been invited to gatherings and just hadn’t shown up. Then why didn’t anyone ever ask where I was?, I wondered. To be clear, I have 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.”
Finally, she implored moms to be brave and leave their mom groups if they feel excluded or left out. “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.”
Although she didn’t name names, it didn’t take long for internet sleuths to put together some of the women in Tisdale’s former mom group. After all, the evidence was on Instagram.
In July 2022, Tisdale shared a photo with a group of women that included Hilary Duff and Meghan Trainor. “Moms weekend away!” Tisdale captioned the now-deleted photo. “I love being surrounded by these ladies. What an amazing group of women to journey through this mom-hood together! So grateful for this trip ❤️.”
Duff shared the same picture (which is still up), writing, “Just a couple of moms on a good night sleep …… love you girls thanks for the unwind/recharge we missed you @mandymooremm.”
According to Page Six, Tisdale no longer follows Duff or Mandy Moore on Instagram, although she does follow Trainor. A rep for Tisdale told TMZ, however, that her essay in The Cut wasn’t about Mandy Moore, Hilary Duff, or Meghan Trainor.
Back in Dec. 2024, the Lizzie McGuire alum told PEOPLE that she sees her mom group “two to three times a week.”
“I feel like our big connection to one another, even though we’re pop stars or on TV, is we love our kids,” Duff dished. “They were little baby worms when we all first got together and started music class at my house. Now, we’re in art class together, and we’re in gymnastics class together, and we’re just, like, moms.”
“Everybody’s super hardworking,” she added. “Sometimes we’re all showing up with hair and makeup rushing from a job, and sometimes we look like literal trash, so it’s just nice to be in the trenches with them.”
Trainor has shared similar thoughts. In a 2022 interview with SheKnows, she gushed, “My mom group is one of the best things that has ever happened to me, because I never feel alone and I can ask them anything,” she told us. “They are always there for me.”
It’s impossible to know what the catalyst was for Tisdale to feel left out of the group, or if it was a misunderstanding, or if something else happened that Tisdale didn’t disclose. I think we can all relate to feeling excluded at some point or another (yes, even from mom friends), but we also know the importance of having a village of women to lean on who just get it. Putting her group chat on blast was definitely a choice, but we hope they can work things out amongst themselves because no one should have to be alone in their motherhood journey.
Before you go, check out what these celebrity moms have to say about being mom-shamed.
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