Looking for mum groups near you sounds simple right up until you try it. Somewhere between the hospital discharge papers and the first full night’s sleep, most of us work out that we need other mums — not advice, not a leaflet, but women who are awake at the same hours and free on a Tuesday morning.
Finding them is the hard part. This page is a straight answer to where mum groups actually are in the UK, what the different kinds are for, and what to do if you’ve looked and there’s genuinely nothing near you.
On this page
- Where to find mum groups near you
- New mum groups, antenatal groups and toddler groups
- Baby classes aren’t the same as mum friendship groups
- What if there are no mum groups near you?
- Frequently asked questions
- You don’t have to find a group to find your people
Where to find mum groups near you
Ask your health visitor. They know what’s running in your area, including the groups that never appear online. This is the single most reliable starting point in the UK and it’s free — your health visiting team will usually have a list, and they often run the sessions themselves.
Baby clinic or weigh-in clinic. Drop-in sessions where you’ll be sitting in a room with other mums whose babies are within weeks of yours. The weighing takes two minutes; the queue is the point.
Your family hub or children’s centre. Stay and play, baby massage, breastfeeding support, baby sensory — mostly free or a couple of pounds. England has been moving children’s centres to family hubs, so search both names for your council. Our Leeds guide covers how mums there connect beyond the sessions.
Your library. Rhymetime, Baby Bounce and Rhyme, or Bookbug if you’re in Scotland. Free, weekly, no booking, and the same faces turn up every week — which is what turns a session into a friendship. If you’re in Glasgow, our city guide covers the other ways mums there meet.
Antenatal courses, during and after. NHS antenatal classes are free; NCT courses are paid but deliberately built around a small group that keeps meeting afterwards. NCT also runs free Bumps and Babies meetups you can join without doing a course.
Parent and toddler groups at churches and community centres. Often the oldest and warmest groups in a town, usually £1–2 with squash and a biscuit, and almost never findable on Google — look at the noticeboard outside, or ask in a local Facebook group.
Facebook and local noticeboards. Search “[your town] mums”, “[your town] mums group” and “[your town] parents”. Netmums has a Meet a Mum board and Mumsnet has local boards; both are quiet in places and busy in others, so it’s worth ten minutes to find out which yours is. In the bigger cities there’s far more on, and our guides to finding mum friends in London, Manchester and Birmingham cover the other ways in.
If you’re in Ireland, Australia or New Zealand
The institutions have different names but the route is the same. In Ireland, start with your public health nurse, and look up Cuidiú for antenatal courses and parent-and-toddler groups. In Australia, your maternal and child health nurse runs the new parents’ group for babies born around the same time as yours — ask to be put in one — and Playgroup Australia lists groups by postcode. In New Zealand, Whānau Āwhina Plunket coffee groups do exactly this job, and Playcentre is the next step once your baby is on the move.
New mum groups, antenatal groups and toddler groups
Antenatal groups meet before the baby arrives, usually through an NHS or NCT course. The advantage is timing: everyone is due within a few weeks of each other, so you all hit the same stages together. If you’re pregnant now, this is the easiest group you will ever join.
New mum groups are for the first year, and they’re less about activities than about company. Baby clinics, stay and play sessions and buggy walks all count. Nobody minds if you cry, leave early, or spend the whole hour feeding.
Toddler groups start when your baby is mobile and your needs change — you want somewhere safe to let them loose and a chair to sit in. Parent and toddler groups, stay and play, and playgroups all fill this gap.
Groups for second and third babies are the ones people forget exist. You may have done this before, but you haven’t done it in this town, or with this age gap, or alongside a school run. It’s completely normal to go looking for mum friends again at any stage.
Baby classes aren’t the same as mum friendship groups
Baby sensory, Water Babies, Monkey Music, Hartbeeps, Tumble Tots — these are good for your baby and good for getting out of the house, and plenty of friendships have started in one. But a class is thirty-five minutes of structured activity led by someone else, and then everyone packs up and goes home. You can attend for a whole term and never have a conversation.
If you’re paying for a class mainly to meet people, two things double your odds: get there five minutes early, and suggest a coffee afterwards. The friendships come from the ten minutes outside, not the singing.
What if there are no mum groups near you?
This is far more common than the internet admits. If you’re rural, or new to the country, or working full-time, or your baby naps straight through every session in your area, “just join a group” isn’t advice — it’s a closed door.
Widen the radius before you give up. The next town over is often twenty minutes away and running three groups you’ve never heard of.
Look outside the baby-shaped options. A walking group, a running club with a crèche, a choir, a WhatsApp street group. Shared logistics beat shared interests at this stage of life.
Start the group yourself. A post in a local Facebook group saying “mums in [town], I’m at the park on Thursday at 10 if anyone wants to join” works more often than it has any right to. You need one other person for it to have worked.
Meet mums online first. This is what MamaMeet is for. You can find mums nearby, and when nearby is empty, you can find mums who are up at 3am with a baby the same age as yours. Online friendships are not a consolation prize — for a lot of mums they’re the ones that last.
Frequently asked questions
Start with your health visitor, your local baby clinic and your library — between them they cover most of what runs in a typical UK town, and all three are free. Then search Facebook for “[your town] mums”, and check whether your council has a family hub or children’s centre with a timetable. NCT Bumps and Babies meetups are free and open to anyone, course or no course.
Many are. Health visitor clinics, library Rhymetime and Bookbug, NHS antenatal classes and most family hub sessions cost nothing. Parent and toddler groups usually ask for £1–2. Paid options like NCT courses and baby classes cost more, and their real value is often the group that forms around them rather than the content itself.
A baby group is organised around an activity for your baby — singing, sensory play, swimming. A mum group is organised around you, and the babies come along. Both are worth doing, but if you’re looking for friends, pick the ones with unstructured time in them, or build in a coffee afterwards.
During pregnancy if you can. Antenatal groups put you with women due at the same time as you, which is the easiest possible basis for a friendship, and you’ll have the energy for introductions that you won’t have in week three. If your baby is already here, you haven’t missed anything — people join at every stage.
Then you go to a different one. Groups have personalities, and a room that felt wrong in one village hall can feel completely different two miles away. Most mums who found their people tried several groups first, and nobody keeps a register.
Yes. One-to-one is much easier than a room, and that’s how apps like MamaMeet work — you message one person, you meet for a walk or a coffee, and there’s no group to walk into. If a group does appeal later, arriving with one friend already makes it far easier.
You’re still the target of every group on this page. Toddler groups, school-gate friendships and mum walking groups exist precisely because the need doesn’t stop at twelve months. Looking for mum friends when your child is three, or six, is ordinary, not late.
You don’t have to find a group to find your people
Groups are one route. They’re not the only one, and they don’t work everywhere — which is exactly why MamaMeet exists. Find mums near you, message one, meet for a walk. One conversation is enough to start.
