Lily Allen and the beautiful secret about school-gate mums that terrifies everyone else

With all the horror stories about mums at the school gate, it’s all too easy to assume the worst. Not to mention the rise of class WhatsApp groups being a toxic hive of competition – something I’ve also experienced from the wider community.

But there’s actually a different side to school mums that Lily Allen has recently discovered during the agonising breakup of her marriage to Stranger Things actor David Harbour – how supportive they can be.

“They were there when I was in a really tough spot,” Allen, 40, said in an interview for the March issue of Elle UK. “They could see how drawn I was and how withdrawn I became and how skinny I got and how sad I was.”

The singer eventually spiralled into such emotional turmoil that she checked into an £8,000-a-week residential rehab in the US in early 2025 to unpack her trauma. That would have given her the chance to take part in intensive group counselling sessions and one-on-one therapy, after telling friends that she was close to a nervous breakdown following the end of her marriage.

Allen had suspected Harbour of cheating, and then reportedly discovered he had a secret profile on the celebrity dating app Raya.

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But the mum of two, who has since poured her marital anguish into her “revenge” album, West End Girl, says that throughout the whole ordeal, she found comfort in the mothers she made friends with through her daughters, Ethel, 14, and Marnie, 13, saying: “They’d come and pick up their kids from playdates and I wouldn’t come downstairs. I’d be in my bedroom crying.”

How refreshing to hear that Allen’s mum group saved her – because it’s happened to me, too, every time.

When my two daughters – Lola, nine, and Liberty, seven – first started primary school, I’d never imagined myself turning to a mum tribe for respite from my various traumas. I‘d always braced myself for a mad dash from the school gates as fast as possible, to avoid getting roped into some boring gossip – or a tiger mum showdown.

I was an antisocial mum who dreaded the meet-and-greet with the other parents in the classroom on my child’s first day. I got dirty looks because I avoided anything to do with PTA coffee mornings, charity parent runs, or those friendly get-to-know-you quiz nights in the pub.

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I never thought that in my darkest days, it would be the mums at school who would be my comfort blanket. But I was shocked to realise how wrong I was.

As I juggled life as a single working mum, the only people I’d see regularly were other mums at drop-off and pick-up. In no time, I had far more in common with a select few of them than with even my oldest friends, whom I’d known for over 20 years.

When I was going through a crisis, caring for my late elderly dad, while trying to hold down a job and look after two young kids, my school mum friends rallied round me.

Not only did they offer to take the kids off my hands, but they also invited me over for a good cry, with one mum, now my bestie, thoughtfully buying me Magnesium Relax Bath Flakes, a geranium candle from Daylesford, and a bar of luxury Melt chocolate to cheer me up.

When my dad died in 2024, it was in these mums that I found solace. They whisked me round the corner from the school gates as I burst into tears at the drop of a hat, and gave me a huge hug.

When the fight over my dad’s will exploded, it was the mums at school who offered me respite from my suffering by sharing similar family stories of greed and resentment.

When I had to go to A&E with suspected sepsis three years ago, I didn’t call my family; I called my school mum friends. One of the mums, who saw I was struggling to take my kids to swimming lessons after school, offered to take them – and has been doing it every Wednesday since. It’s pure, loving kindness.

And the support doesn’t stop at a crisis (of which I’ve had many). When I complained that my flat needed refurbishing, my closest school mum friend sent her husband over to redecorate it – for free.

It’s my mum friends who show up in my darkest days, and while some are closer than others, they all pay their part. Last week, I received a number of texts asking how I’m doing after I’d been spotted doing the school run with dried blood and gore over my face after a non-invasive “facelift” at a posh Belgravia clinic.

It’s all too easy to dismiss mums at the school gate as toxic, leave the class WhatsApp group in fury, or pick up school-gate frenemies, as portrayed by Anna Maxwell Martin and Lucy Punch in the BBC sitcom Motherland. The truth is, there is so much beauty and compassion in these school mum relationships that I’ve found nowhere else.

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Of course, I’ve had my bust-ups with school mums too, and been dying for the end of term to get a break from the latest school-gate drama. But even then, my core group of mums will always be on hand to support me and have my back – for example, when I was named and shamed on the class WhatsApp for not helping out at the school fair by carrying a trestle table or two.

The school-gate mum-hate always feels very misogynistic. People like to pitch us against each other, trying to divide and rule by labelling us “gym bunny”, “clipboard mum”, “vegan eco mum”, “drive-by mum”, “WhatsApp mum”, “Instagram mum”, “activewear mum”, “wine mum”, and “affluent neglect mum” – but the truth is that in our numbers we find our power.

It’s about looking at the similarities, not the differences, and finding love in the tribe. Whether it’s just understanding how it feels to lose a PE kit, and the guilty sadness you feel when your child has their first sleepover, or being a steadfast rock following a breakup or the death of a loved one, it’s vital that we appreciate each other.

As Allen has found, our fellow mums are the ones who see us in our rawest form – early in the mornings before we’ve had time to process emotions or brush our hair – and at our lowest. All too often, their acts of kindness make the difference between sinking and swimming.