Depending on your demographic, Ashley Tisdale has many names. Sharpay, Maddie, and Candace. But since 2014, she’s been Ashley Tisdale-French, and in November 2025, finally changed her name publicly to reflect her personal reality. This ties in to her lifestyle blog, By Ashley French, where she shares recipes, decorating tips, and personal essays.
Her most recent essay had many people coming out of the woodwork, as she noted in a follow-up on The Cut. Trolls and “wannabe online sleuths” came for her, projecting their own opinions. But she also said that this is the norm for someone who was thrust into the public eye as a teenager. The fact that she continues to share her personal writing online is commendable.
In Tisdale’s latest post, “You’re Allowed to Leave Your Mom Group,” she called out the often toxic realities of getting a bunch of new moms together. How they start as a community of women dealing with all the hardships that come with new motherhood. The usual struggles were exacerbated by the general events of 2021, when Tisdale had her first child. She was searching for support, a place to vent, advice, and camaraderie in the trenches of child-rearing.
What she got, she wrote, was a regression back to high school bullying when her mom group turned toxic. This, surprisingly enough, is a widespread cultural phenomenon. “Not because the moms themselves are toxic people,” she clarified, “but because the dynamic shifts into an ugly place with mean-girl behavior.”
Ashley Tisdale Says Out Loud What Women Are Thinking About Their Toxic Mom Groups
For Ashley Tisdale, her mom group started to branch off into cliques within the larger group. Text chains popped up excluding other people, and some women were criticized behind their backs. It got to the point where Tisdale had to ask herself an important question. “Why am I still showing up for this?” She wrote.
“I was starting to feel frozen out of the group, noticing every way that they seemed to exclude me,” she wrote on The Cut. “At first, I tried not to take things personally. We were all busy. Life was hectic. I told myself it was all in my head, and it wasn’t a big deal.
“And yet, I could sense a growing distance between me and the other members of the group, who seemed not to even care that I wasn’t around much,” she continued. Tisdale then noticed a pattern; there had been another mom in the group who had been frozen out. Now it was her turn.
She related this experience to being back in high school, navigating friend groups, rejection, and bullying. “Lately, I’ve been thinking about how being a new mom has emotional echoes of high school,” she wrote. “It’s an exciting time of discovery and growth, but it’s also a time of feeling vulnerable and unsure. You’re thrust into new situations with new people, wondering if they could be the friend who can walk beside you in this new time in your life — and there’s no way to know for sure unless you put yourself out there. And in both cases, your hormones are all over the place.”
The Toxic Mom Group is Real, and It Happened to Ashley Tisdale
Tisdale wrote that it would have been easy to just ghost her toxic mom group, let them drift apart. But then, she thought, “‘Aren’t we supposed to be teaching our kids to speak up for themselves when their feelings are hurt?’”
So, instead of taking the easy way out, she texted the group chat and made her feelings known. “‘This is too high school for me, and I don’t want to take part in it anymore,’” she wrote, which she said didn’t exactly go over well. Some of the moms scrambled to smooth things over, while others came up with excuses. Another sent flowers but then ignored her.
On the flip side, her other friends congratulated her on her bravery in calling out the unhealthy dynamic. Women she didn’t even know shared their own stories of toxic mom groups with her. Tisdale still wondered why it was so scary and difficult to talk about this, though.
“Motherhood has enough challenges without having to wonder if the people around you are on your side,” she wrote. “You deserve to go through motherhood with people who actually, you know, like you. And if you have to wonder if they do, here’s the hard-earned lesson I hope you’ll take to heart: It’s not the right group for you. Even if it looks like they’re having the best time on Instagram.”
Photo by Charles Sykes/Bravo via Getty Images
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