Weather 
In Manhattan’s pre-eminent mom in-crowd, Izzy Anaya is constantly finding herself on the outs.
The Upper West Side parent — with two fifth grade boys attending one of NYC’s most elite schools — does not get invited to hang with the other pupils’ mothers, who indulge in girls-night-out dinners and dancing at Zero Bond.
She’s also not on the guest list for the tight-knit group’s annual, ultra-extravagant Super Bowl party — a popular, parents-only get together Anaya plans to watch the others enjoy from the sidelines, while she’s home and scrolling her Instagram timeline on Feb. 8, this year’s big game day.
And when it comes to in-person events that every student’s parents are invited to attend — like fundraisers or school plays — those same cool moms “avoid me like the plague,” Anaya, 46, a lifestyle content creator, exclusively tells The Post.
“I see all the fun they’re having on social media,” she said, “and it’s hurtful when you’re not included.”
The brazen exclusion isn’t due to any gross social ineptitude on the married brunette’s part, nor could she be accused of any attempts to usurp the throne from the mom group’s twiggy, blond, Lululemon-loving, Pilates-obsessed “Queen Bee.”
Instead, Anaya claims she’s been banned from the snooty clique for a far more petty offense.
“It’s because I don’t have a vacation home in the Hamptons,” groaned the self-crowned “odd mom out.”
Anaya, alongside her business mogul husband, owns four homes around the world — just none in Long Island’s most coveted stretch of shoreline.
And she says her disinterest in the desirable summer destination, where all the other school parents booze and bond each season, has rendered her a high-society pariah.
“It’s like, just because I don’t have blonde hair and a Hamptons house, I can’t hang out with you guys,” she continued. “It’s upsetting. It’s upsetting on a consistent basis. But what am I supposed to do?.”
“We’re not in high school anymore. We don’t need to continue this kind of behavior. We’re all grown women.”
Age and maturity, however, seem to have little effect on the functions of this hyper-exclusive, one-false-move-and-you’re-out mommy mob — and others like it in NYC and around the region.
Actress Ashley Tisdale, a mother to two small girls, recently blew the lid off of “toxic” mom group culture, detailing the mental and emotional damages that come with being a sudden social outcast.
“Why me?,” Tisdale, 40, of “High School Musical” fame, wondered in her January 1 essay for The Cut. In the explosive exposé, the former Disney channel star recounted her slow, yet unmistakable excommunication from the VIP pack, which included the A-list likes of Mandy Moore and Hilary Duff.
“Maybe I’m not cool enough?,” Tisdale wrote. “All of a sudden, I was in high school again, feeling totally lost as to what I was doing ‘wrong’ to be left out.”
Anaya’s found herself in a similar state of confusion over the years, she said — though with plenty of time for reflection, she’s identified a few potential missteps that may have rubbed others the wrong way.
Along with her aversion to hobnobbing in the Hamptons, the Brooklyn native refuses to send her boys, both age 11, to the ritzy sleep-away camp all the other mothers ship their kids off to each summer — preferring to spend the hot months exposing her brood to the wonders and cultures of other countries.
Anaya also lets her boys enjoy screen time and technology, apparently a major sin among members of the inner circle. Her permissive parenting — and slack attention to text messaging detail — recently landed her in big trouble.
“Before I was completely out of the group chat, all the moms were talking about being anti-tech,” Anaya remembered. “I was getting annoyed, and I meant to text my friend (who did not belong to this mom group), ‘Oh my god, these people are so old [school].’ But I accidentally texted that message to the group.”
That split-second faux pas appeared to have fueled the gaggle’s resolve to ice her out, permanently.
Unfortunately, Anaya’s children have also felt the frosty sting of the collective’s cold shoulder.
“My kids have been alienated,” she said. “The moms host play dates, parties and sleepovers, but my kids aren’t invited because we’re not friends.”
“It’s heartbreaking.”
These days, Anaya said she’s focused on building a more welcoming village for herself and her boys.
“I’ve reconnected with friends who have kids around my boys’ age, I’ve made friends with parents on the kids’ sporting teams and we have our international friends,” said Anaya. “So we’re good without the cliquey toxicity.”
Amber Marlow echoes similar sentiments.
The married mother of two, who lives in New York’s newly-fashionable Hudson Valley, tells The Post she’s been booted out of several malicious mom groups, both online and in-person, due to her unique parenting style.
The self-proclaimed “strict gentle parent” — an uncommon hybrid between traditional child-rearing and new age leniency — first got a taste of the mommy mayhem on Facebook. In a local mom group, she openly disagreed with another mom’s decision to spank her 20-month-old infant.
“I very carefully worded it, saying ‘I think that it’s very inappropriate to hit a baby. It’s [borderline] abusive’,” said Marlow, 43, a wedding photographer, adding that she was “shocked” and “horrified” by the use of corporal punishment. “They kicked me out of the group for having an opinion.”
Sadly, the New Yorker, with a four-year-old son and six-year-old daughter, hasn’t had much success with moms in-real-life either.
“My family gets excluded from play dates and parties because my daughter is neurodivergent,” sighed Marlow, who was left out of a “Snow Day” party just last month. “She processes things differently, and the other kids and moms at school don’t really embrace us.”
“Both instances have kind of [soured me] to the whole ‘mom group’ thing.”
New Jersey parent Dominique Devizio agrees.
The new mom swiftly removed herself from a local Facebook group after getting “attacked” by the other moms — just moments after becoming the victim of crime.
“An individual stole a package that had been delivered to my house while I was out, and I caught it on camera,” said Devizio, 31, a podcaster and events director. “I wrote to the group, ‘Hey, has anyone seen this individual? He’s in our area. I’m scared. I’m a stay-at-home mom and severely postpartum. I don’t feel safe.’”
But rather than being showered with loving support, the married New Jerseyan was bulldozed with curses and epithets.
“These women, these mothers, began attacking me, saying ‘You’re a racist.’‘This is your fault.’ ‘You left your packages outside.’ ‘No one in their right mind would order this many packages at once and leave them on their front doorstep.’”
“It was nonstop.”
The contentious kerfuffle left Devizio without a viable parenting community. However, it gave her a renewed outlook on mom groups overall.
“Of course you can look at the group you were in, or similar groups you think you’d want to be part of, and feel [a sense of] jealousy because it looks like a great time and a safe space,” said the millennial. “But once you’re in it, you’re like, ‘Crap, there’s some real toxicity here.’”
Devizio plans to keep her mommy circle — exclusively comprised of close friends and family — small for the foreseeable future.
“Having this big network of local mom ‘friends’ just isn’t for me,” she said. “Less is more.”
