Finding My Mum Village on Peanut: How Swipes, Small Talk & Snack Chats Saved My Sanity

Meeting new people in your 30s is so hard; meeting a specific sect of people, i.e. new mums of a similar age with similar interests, is even harder. I was never part of the dating pool when apps like Tinder were garnering popularity among my generation, so colour me surprised when I found myself using a similar app years later to find mum friends. The app was Peanut, and it was becoming a great source of support, entertainment (like the Easter egg debate of 2023, IYKYK) and a tool for making friends. 

Created by Michelle Kennedy, the head of the tech company that bought us Bumble, to “help mums meet other mums.” It works just like any other traditional dating app; you swipe up or down when you see a profile you like until you match, or you can “slip into their DM’s” if they’re unable to see “waves.”  

I never knew what a “mum date” was until I went on my first one and quickly realised why they were referred to as dates - they were just as awkward as dates and I would often find myself questioning whether this was actually the person I had been speaking to online because they were very different in person - the only thing we seemed to have in common was the fact we birthed a human being recently. But after a few mum dates, I worked out how to manage the minefield of Peanut mums and figured out the best tools to find mums that pass my vibe check. 

During our dates, I would slip in questions like “How did your little one manage after her vaccination?” or “Can you believe what the Tories are doing now!?” to help me determine whether they would get a second date or not. 

Look, some people may raise an eyebrow or two when I ask whether a mum vaccinates their child or what their political views are. They might think I’m being judgmental or dramatic or that it's unnecessary. But hear me out - I’m not auditioning friends for a Paris Hilton-style game show where I am on the lookout for my new BFF. I am just trying to figure out who I might be spending time with…and more importantly, who my daughter might be sharing snacks and worldview-shaping conversations with. The people you choose to have in your circle matter, and I just want to make sure our little village isn’t full of conspiracy theorists, right-wing sympathisers and questionable parenting decisions. That's fair, right?    

And here's the thing - I need to find my people. I want to find a group of mums I would feel comfortable enough to share everything from parenting wins, memes or help getting through the hard times - the sleepless nights, illness or relationship woes. I want to be able to go on park walks, coffee in hand, feeling like I could exhale a sigh of relief that I wasn’t alone, that someone else was going through the same thing as me. Creating my own village where we could laugh, vent, and share snack hacks and ideas. There's a real excitement in finding those connections.  It's not about filtering people out - it's about finding the ones you actually want to be friends with and let them into your life.  

No one tells you how lonely you can feel after having your baby, even though you’re never really alone, your baby is always with you, or you may be lucky enough to have family nearby to help out and visit. But still, with all that noise in your life, no one understands the isolation you feel once you become a mother - you go from having constant support throughout your pregnancy, but once the baby is born, you're sent home and forgotten, feeling abandoned as they move on to the next. Society expects you to bounce back and carry on as normal with little to no support. The Peanut app allowed me to find my tribe. After meeting a lot of strange and wonderful mums who I didn’t vibe with, I found a group of women to figure out motherhood with. Motherhood can make you feel invisible and unvalued at times, and voicing those concerns, you are seen as ungrateful and met with a lack of empathy and understanding. That is why most mothers need the additional support from the 2 AM Whatsapp group of other mothers going through the exact same things that they are - they understand, they empathise, and they listen. 

And with my little village built, I am reminded that motherhood doesn’t have to be solitary - it can be shared, snack by snack, message by message, sigh by sigh.