As any new mother with only kidless mates can tell you, it’s key to make friends with women who are also experiencing the ups and downs of life with a baby. On the other hand, simply both being mums is not much basis for a friendship. Megan Butler decided to help likeminded mums find each other by launching Match Up Mums, a sort of group dating site for women to find other mothers to commiserate with. Megan talked to WLM about her new venture.
1. Tell us a little about yourself.
I have three children myself—five-year-old twin boys and a three-year-old daughter. I live in Clapham London and my background was in advertising.
2. What was your inspiration behind Match Up Mums?
I first had the idea after my then-pregnant sister-in-law asked how she would meet mum friends. She wanted to do a hospital course, which was free, but was considering also taking an additional course just to meet mum friends. I knew from experience how hit-and-miss the traditional antenatal courses could be as a way of making new friends, despite the huge cost.
The reason they are hit-and-miss is that they are there to teach you about birth, not to help you meet likeminded women. Groupings are based on due date, not personality or interests, so it is down to luck whether you meet some new friends there, and the opportunities to get to know people properly at the classes can be very limited.
I decided to try to apply the same technology as dating sites—it works well in that sector, as a recent flurry of engagements among my friends goes to show!
3. How does the service work?
Members pay a small, one-off fee (between £20 and £50, depending on the group size or number of matches they would like) to get matched up, and they then complete a profiling questionnaire. With hundreds of variables we get a pretty good picture of who you are. As well as looking at things like your due date or your baby’s date of birth, we also base the matches on things people share in common, like a similar professional background or hobbies, personality statements, attitudes to parenting and much more.
Once we have matched people up into a group, we send them all a group profile to introduce them—so they know that although they are going along to meet some new people, they already have lots in common. We then put them in touch via a WhatsApp group or chat page and send them a pack of icebreaker activities for their first meeting—they are usually too busy chatting to need this, but it’s nice to have there just in case!
4. What areas do you cover?
We are currently London-based, and have matched up over 75 groups of mum friends, from Stoke Newington to Kensington, Balham to Bethnal Green.
5. Are there any other features you’d like to tell us about?
Members of Match Up Mums also get discounts at a range of mum- and baby-friendly businesses, including JoJo Maman Bébé, Lulubaby antenatal classes, Neighbourhood Midwives, Yummy Tummies and many more.
6. Who is your main competition?
People have described Match Up Mums as being ‘a bit like a modern NCT’ but it’s important to say that we don’t see them as competition. For a start we don’t offer antenatal classes, and we have intentionally kept our membership costs low so that people can do their choice of classes—be it hypnobirthing or Lulubaby or NCT—as well as joining up for our service. We are actually collaborating with a local branch of the NCT on an event, and we are excited to be working together on this.
7. What’s next for Match Up Mums?
We have some great new partners coming on board and we can’t wait to tell our members all about the great services they can access via their membership.
We are expanding our team, with some support on social media and marketing.
And of course we are continually working on putting together new groups—we’ve got a big group of Italian mamas who are due to meet soon, we have some second-time mums in Balham who are all ex-lawyers, we are working on a Twickenham group of toddler mums and also some Kensington first-timers who all run their own businesses… and lots more. After all, people are always having babies!
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