The five women have been friends since pre-school. Sophie, with her outsized ego and enviable beauty, has always been the ringleader. None can remember a time when they weren’t an integral part of each other’s lives. They have survived skinned knees, broken hearts, and everything in between. Now they are becoming mothers together.
Sophie is the first to embrace parenthood. Her pregnancy is an accident, her marriage shotgun, her timing bad. But as with most things Sophie does, she frames her mistakes as triumphs. Soon, the others are following suit. The want-to-be mothers have laser-focused baby lust. The friends cry or celebrate with each other every month as periods start or cease.
The new mothers become exclusive. Emma sheds her childless friends from outside the group. Michelle will only allow fellow mothers to hold her new baby. Subtle fissures develop between Kate and Ariel as competition begins for whose baby is the smartest, cutest, quickest to advance. Sophie’s role as unofficial life coach and golden girl diminishes as the friends establish their own views on life and parenthood. Conversations center around motherhood, including graphic details of childbirth, inept fathers, and the relentless responsibility of caring for another human being.
As families grow, some marriages weather the storms of stale relationships and challenging children. Other marriages frayor break. Partners leave; new ones arrive. Some last, some don’t. New families form and prefixes are attached to identify relationships: step, half, former, future. Some parents and children adapt easier than others. The friendships stretch and give but ultimately hold.
The children mature, become individuals separate from their parents’ hopes and dreams. Puberty brings moodiness, indifference, and rebellion. The women assure each other that it’s a phase but in private they fight loudly with their partners over the children. The divorced mothers call themselves single mothers. Absence equals erasure.
The mothers grapple with the fear and loss of releasing adult children into the world. Sophie, Emma, and Michelle are preparing their kids to depart home for college or a gap year. Kate and Ariel are frantically seeking help for children who can’t or won’t launch for reasons too numerous to mention. The unspeakable happens and one teen dies doing something reckless; the other falls down a rabbit hole of addiction. The group mourns together but the other mothers secretly harbor feelings of relief and superiority that their own offspring have fared better.
The remaining children graduate college or trade school and get jobs of varying importance. Several are still financially dependent on their parents. Ariel, for whom parenthood has been a nightmare, secretly fantasizes about life as a childless woman but keeps this information to herself.
As if on cue, Sophie announces during a group lunch that she will be the first among them to become a grandmother. The cycle of life continues. Everyone smiles and congratulates. The soon-to-be grandmother feels that childhood thrill of forging a new path for the others, who she assumes are still eager to follow her example.