Hipster mums and micro-mummagers: Esther Walker meets London's new mum tribes

Are you a hipster mum or a micro-mummager? Esther Walker meets the mum tribes squaring up at the school gates
Esther Walker12 March 2015

RENEGADE MUM

Celebrity idol Myleene Klass

Where to find her Complaining about the prices in I Love Gorgeous in Primrose Hill

Amanda has never accepted the status quo. Ever since the day she mastered her first word, she has questioned every convention in a shrill voice. It is her greatest quality (according to her). So when it comes to the various unspoken ‘mum rules’ — don’t tick off other people’s kids, don’t talk about money, etc — Amanda just won’t play ball. She lives in North London: Highgate if she’s loaded; Archway if not, because she still believes that North London is where the intellectuals and radicals live. She always looks immaculate in J Brand stocking jeans and a rakish Bundle MacLaren trilby so that she can astonish presumptuous people with her left-field vision. She likes to tell other fussing mums at the Highgate Nursery gates, while she’s picking up Tilly (Jonas is at The Hall), to ‘stop being silly’, and mutters about the ‘nonsense’ that people get up to with their kids. She doesn’t understand why other people can’t be freelance photographers, like both she and her husband Roly are, so that they can be more flexible with their kids. Not to be confused with Boss Mum, Renegade Mum’s critical behaviour alienates her from her mum peers. She tells herself that the other mums at Talacre Soft Play are ninnies who can’t handle her straight-talking style — the reality is that she is a total pain and always has been, but at least now that she’s got kids she can blame her friendlessness on ‘mummy wars’.

HIPSTER MUM

Celebrity idol

Gwen Stefani

Where to find her Guerrilla gardening in Victoria Park

You see that child in the playground that on first glance appears to have cut his own hair? That is Billy-Ray and he is the hipster kid of his hipster mum, Rochelle, who is the woman wearing stern spectacles, chaining up her fixie bike outside Hackney Marsh Adventure Playground, while simultaneously ‘liking’ all her friends’ brelfies on Instagram. Forget cracked nipples, stitches and no sleep: coffee mornings, wrap tops and Boden are the three things that frightened Rochelle most before she had a baby. Located mostly in and around Springfield Park, E5, Hipster Mum refuses to give in to mainstream pressure (ie, her mother) to sell her ex-local authority flat and move to Acton so that Billy-Ray can have a bit of garden to run around in, rather than having to spend his time when not at Forest School making origami frogs. Billy-Ray will have the last laugh, though: just as Hipster Mum winds up her own Tunbridge Wells-based mother with her crazy haircut, nasty shoulder tattoo and career as a knitting consultant, Billy-Ray will devastate both parents when at 25 he trains to be an actuary and changes his name by deed poll to Michael.

BOSS MUM

Celebrity idol

Kirstie Allsopp

Where to find her Double-parking her Defender outside Lidgate’s butchers

In a previous life, Miranda was an admiral in the British Navy. She believes that what small children need is fresh air, very few toys and no telly except 20 minutes of The Clangers before bedtime. There is no such thing as ‘bad weather’, just ‘inappropriate clothing’. Boss Mum is found in Clapham or the more affordable parts of West London, and if she could train her four children to respond to a bosun’s whistle, then she would use one. As it is, her foghorn voice can be heard the length of Oxford Gardens, W10, booming: ‘Come on, chaps, we haven’t got all day!’ Nobody is allowed to eat their cottage pie in front of The Clangers and she would rather die than let her children use her as a climbing frame. When she worked, she ran a small catering company and she often muses that it was good preparation for motherhood. Her idea of childcare is turning the children out into the garden — a tangled mess of brambles and hydrangeas — and telling them to make a den. Her Dubarry boots and English Pointer, Bojo, are constant companions; she can’t remember the last time she cried, even when her husband Jasper came back from his last long posting. But don’t think Miranda is an unsympathetic meanie: her beaten-up kitchen table is home-from-home to a stream of mum ‘muckers’ who seek her out for tea and sympathy. Her children — Jonny, Billy, Cecily and Kate — on the other hand, live in constant fear.

MICRO-MUMMAGER

Celebrity idol

Miranda from Sex and the City

Where to find her Running towards

Holborn Tube stationRachel can create a problem out of thin air as she tries to make sure that every aspect of her life, her children’s lives and everyone else’s behaviour runs according to her own idealised plan. Defensive in the extreme, Micro-Mummager constructs a patina of organisation and strained politeness in order to conceal a torment of emotion beneath, which occasionally reveals itself as either a snarling beast or a tearful wreck. Often a high-flier at a large corporate firm — although just as ‘happy’ running a home in the manner of a large accounts department — Micro-Mummager can usually be identified by the fact that, despite her manic over-organisation, she always looks a mess with straggly hair, crappy Asics trainers and an overstuffed Longchamp handbag. She is so busy curating a snack of rice cakes and a carob bar for Christopher’s playdate this afternoon, and refreshing the ream of notes for her mum, who is taking Christopher and Leonora on Saturday morning, that she can’t prioritise getting herself to a yoga class or having a haircut. Her husband Simon genuinely thinks she requires medication but would never dare say so.

TIGER MUM 2.0

Celebrity idol

Amy Chua

Where to find her On her Samsung Galaxy outside the Suzuki Institute in Kensington

At school, Lucy was her class representative for the student council, played netball for the 1st VII and took Grade 8 flute. University was similar and she believes she owes everything to this hatful of extra-curricular activities. Lucy, like all Tiger Mums, has her wardrobe down to a fine art: there are gold embellishments on everything and she owns five pairs of identical black trousers. (If she had her way, her entire wardrobe would be from Joseph but she often has to make do with COS.) Even Tiger Mum’s kids’ downtime is scheduled — there’s allotted time for Leo and Laura to do colouring-in and ‘free play’ (as long as it doesn’t make any noise or mess). Tiger Mum 2.0 would never tell anyone this, but when she was two years old, Laura was diagnosed with exhaustion: her lunchtime nap had been cut down to 15 minutes so she could get to Kumon maths at 1.30pm, three days a week. Even now Lucy privately dismisses this as a misdiagnosis of a wheat allergy. Over-scheduling her children’s lives is a way of covering up for the fact that Tiger Mum finds them staggeringly dull and can’t stand having to entertain them at home. Laura and Leo cope with it all admirably but will drop every single activity as soon as/if they are given half a chance. Lucy’s husband Luke tells everyone what a great mum she is.

SCUMMY MUMMY

Celebrity idol

Nigella

Where to find her Complaining to Vincent in Ayres Bakery, Nunhead

Jess is worse than you in every conceivable way. Her children are feral, they eat only fish fingers and worship Team Umizoomi. They wake up at night, they are jealous, violent, unbearable. They have ruined Jess’ life. She’s also a lazy, bad wife — her corporate solicitor husband Nick is bound to leave her. Her hair is a mess! Why can’t she sort her hair out? Why can’t she get it together to have a manicure or wear nice things from J Crew? Scummy Mummy will tell you all this within five seconds of meeting her, and her stories of terrible parenting make her popular with other mothers. SM lurks around Peckham and the wrong end of Herne Hill, and is identifiable by her tracksuit bottoms, huge scarf and the stains on her Topshop parka. When not standing in Morrisons on Rye Lane, daydreaming about running away to the Caribbean, she can be found on a bench near Millie’s nursery, cradling a strong coffee and bleating down the phone to a friend about how beastly Millie and George were this morning. When you meet her children you are stunned — they seem adorable, well-fed and polite. Then you realise: SM is like those girls at school who claimed to do no work but somehow aced every exam. Still, she’s a good laugh.

Mother's Day gifts - in pictures

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Illustrations by Lyndon Hayes

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