Online dating apps can lead to marriage, but can a mom-friend app build a village?
If the loneliness epidemic is widespread enough to be considered a public health crisis, we moms are in good company. According to Motherly’s 2025 State of Motherhood, seven in 10 mothers report that motherhood is lonelier than they imagined” and “one in five feels that loneliness every single day.”
As a mom of two kids who are three years apart, my own experience with loneliness surged during my first five years of motherhood. Having a baby and a toddler, juggling a full-time job, and adjusting to my husband’s career transition into firefighting pushed me into a survival-mode lifestyle. My world was shrink-wrapped around a schedule that could barely accommodate life’s necessities, let alone friendship.
I was suddenly hyper-aware of the contrast between my life as a mom with young children and the lives of my friends who didn’t have kids. I felt guilty for turning down invitations to travel or go out and had convinced myself that I couldn’t bore or burden them with invitations into my own world of diaper blowouts, nap schedules, and melt downs.
I was suddenly hyper-aware of the contrast between my life as a mom with young children and the lives of my friends who didn’t have kids. I felt guilty for turning down invitations to travel or go out and had convinced myself that I couldn’t bore or burden them with invitations into my own world of diaper blowouts, nap schedules, and melt downs.
It was painfully obvious that I needed more mom friends—I just didn’t know how to find them. That’s when I discovered the Peanut app.
Nicknamed Tinder for moms, the app aims to connect women who are in similar life stages, whether they’re going through IVF or menopause.
Nicknamed Tinder for moms, the app aims to connect women who are in similar life stages, whether they’re going through IVF or menopause. You can peruse profiles of moms who live nearby, share similar interests, and have kids in the same age group as your kids. If a mom piques your interest, you can swipe up to “wave” or down to move on to the next potential mom friend. If you wave at someone who also waved at you, you’ll get a match notification.
Aside from matching with people through waves, you can also explore the app’s virtual village to post questions, join themed groups with topics that range from raising neurodivergent kids—a topic that hits home for me personally—to co-parenting, or even slip into live chats.
In theory, it sounds amazing. In reality, it’s a mixed bag of experiences.
My own experience with the app fizzled faster than I expected. I struggled to find a big enough pool of moms in close proximity who had similar-aged kids. My most promising match started off with tons of message swapping, but when we attempted to get together with our kids, one of our households would get wiped out by the flu, then the other would be traveling during a school break, etc.. After a few failed attempts, we both gave up.
Apparently, my experience isn’t uncommon. Reddit threads discussing whether the Peanut app is actually helpful for finding meaningful connections echo similar sentiments. “In the beginning, I did have a bunch of matches but they never got out of the introductory small talk. The entire experience felt like a ton of effort with no payoff for me. The one other mom I clicked well with just stopped responding one day and I never heard from her again,” writes one Reddit commenter.
Some Reddit users who made it to the meet-up stage recount negative encounters—like meeting moms who were involved in multi-level marketing or prone to trauma dumping. Others credit the app for helping them find at least one genuine mom friend. Like dating apps, success rates seem to boil down to a combination of dedication, ruthless editing, and luck.
Now that I’m past the five-year hump of fresh motherhood, my social landscape has shifted for the better. I haven’t evaded loneliness entirely, but I have changed my approach to finding community, and it’s helped.
I’ve forced myself to start more conversations at school pick-up or on the sidelines of practices and games. When I’m drawing a small-talk blank (which I often do) I default to asking questions, which has helped me find more common ground with strangers.
I’ve let go of waiting for invites. When I’m feeling it, I make the first move. I’ve realized that most people are hoping that the other person sends the first text, hosts the first playdate, or breaks the ice with a smile and a hello. If I waited for those things to come to me, I’d be waiting a lot.
I’m still trying to remind myself that no one really cares how well-organized, impeccably clean, or beautifully decorated my house is. They just want to feel comfortable and welcome in it, which helps me open my door more often.
The challenges I ran into with Peanut are the same challenges people run into with real-life interactions— you meet another mom at the park, swap numbers, struggle to find the right time to get together, and then eventually drop it. The Peanut app pointed me in the direction of potential friends, but I realized that the hard work of searching for chemistry, leaning into vulnerability, and nurturing friendships wasn’t something I could outsource. I think that the most effective antidote for loneliness is buried in the smallest, most mundane opportunities life offers. I just have to remember to dig.
source https://www.mother.ly/relationships/what-the-mom-friend-app-peanut-is-really-like/
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