Meet the women who set up Mush: the new 'Tinder for mums'
Katie Massie-Taylor met Sarah Hesz on a cold and rainy morning in south-west London. As meet-cutes go, it wasn’t particularly auspicious.
“We were the only ones in the playground and Sarah came up and awkwardly chatted me up - she asked for my number within two minutes,” Katie laughs. “We went on to see each other every day - doing what we would otherwise have done alone, together.”
Katie and Sarah weren’t after romantic dates; they were new mothers, lurking in the playground with their nearly-two-year-olds first thing in the morning, just to get out of the house, and both with two-week-old babies strapped to their chests.
They soon realised that, not only were their children nearly identical ages, but they lived three streets away from each other and - the ultimate sign of modern connection - they had Facebook friends in common.
As she recalls, Katie was close to tears that morning, having recently moved back from New York to London. Finding Sarah “kept her sane”.
Over the first year of their friendship, Katie and Sarah developed Mush, an app that operates like Tinder for mothers, using GPS and shared interests to link people with possible mates. With 75,000 members, this free app engineers the sort of sanity-saving connection Sarah and Katie found in the park on a national and international scale; it has 8,000 members and counting in Australia.
When searching for friends, you can see their photos, as well as their children’s ages and their interests (top three tags: wine lover; caffeine lover; sweary), which Sarah and Katie have found is the primary thing parents are looking for.
Mush has been so popular that the mental health charity Heads Together has made a video documenting Katie and Sarah’s first meeting, one of a series released by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry today to highlight how one pivotal conversation can change your mindset.
Loneliness is, as Katie found, a hallmark of motherhood. “When I first described this idea to my mum, she said ‘All mums are lonely; it’s a rite of passage.’
“My grandmother used to talk about how, as a new mum, she lived at the top of a block of flats and she didn’t leave all day,” says Katie. “She remembered early motherhood as really, really difficult.
“That’s why it was such a lightbulb moment when we realised we could actually help.”
In spite of physically being with small humans all the time, conversation is, for obvious reasons, thin on the ground. In fact, according to research conducted by Mush, while more than four in five mothers considered their friends a source of happiness, 60 per cent of them “often” go through a full day without adult interaction.
“Days drag,” Katie explains. “Women find it really difficult to go from being a busy person in demand, with other adults, to being at home all day with something that doesn’t give back to you.
“You’re also at the mercy of [babies'] schedules - so you don’t make plans. None of your old friends are around: they’re at work. You need to find a new groove and new people to spend your days with.”
Mush has filters on its app so you can find local mums who have children the exact same number of weeks old as your own; even a matter of days can represent a huge leap in baby development. "You want like-minded friends with kids of the same age, so you’re going through things at the same time,” Katie says.
And while it may seem terribly modern, one of the ways the app appeals is that, like a dating device, this is explicitly about making connections; for people not quite as forthright as Sarah, there’s no being coy about asking for someone’s number.
Katie’s mother also recalled making friends through the NCT, so it makes perfect sense that Britain’s largest charity for parents has partnered with Mush, its first connection with an external technology organisation, in order to foster friendships between parents.
Other, of course, than downloading the app, what would Katie advise other new mums to do?
“Bite the bullet and say hello to people. We have a basic human need to interact - you must use whatever tools possible to make sure you’re surrounded by others. If in doubt, get out.”
