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Hilary Duff’s husband Matthew Koma has weighed in on the conversation surrounding Ashley Tisdale’s departure from the “Toxic Mom Group.”
Koma, 38, posted a photo of herself Photoshopped onto Tisdale’s body. In a photo posted to his Instagram Story on Tuesday, January 6, he is seen sitting on a couch next to a houseplant, wearing an all-black outfit with rose-tinted sunglasses.
Koma added the Cut logo and a fictional caption to the photo, adding, “When you’re the most self-centered tone-deaf person on the planet, other moms tend to shift their focus to their actual toddlers,” and a subheading that read, “Moms group tells everything through dads’ eyes.”
“Read our new interview with @TheCut,” Koma captioned the Instagram Story post.
The post appears to be a direct rebuke of Tisdale’s recent personal essay published in The Cut on Monday, January 5th.
Tisdale, 40, anonymously named the women in her former friend group in her article, instead framing the experience as a powerful reminder to anyone that it’s okay to walk away from relationships that are no longer healthy.
“If your mom group always leaves you feeling hurt, exhausted, or left out, it’s not the mom group for you,” Tisdale wrote. “Choosing distance doesn’t mean being mean or critical; it allows you to be true to yourself. It’s also worth remembering that, like all relationships, friendships have seasons.”
In a personal essay, she recalls a series of small events that allegedly led her to leave the group. The High School Musical alum said that when she learned she was no longer invited to group gatherings, she initially ignored it and made up excuses as to why she had been left out.
“We were all busy, life was hectic, and I told myself it was all in my head and no big deal,” Tisdale wrote. But by the third or fourth time, when I saw photos of my friends without me on social media, I began to feel that the exclusion was intentional.
“When I started to feel left out, I remembered something. Or rather, I remembered someone,” Tisdale reflected in his essay. “In the early days of the group, there was another mother who was often not included in the membership. I had sensed hints of a strange dynamic, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. I was really happy to have found these incredibly smart and funny women.”
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she continued. “It seemed like this group had a pattern of removing someone from the group, and that someone became me. Why me? The truth is, I don’t know and probably never will.”
Tisdale’s essay published in The Cut comes a month after her December 2025 blog post titled “I’m Allowed to Leave My Mom Group” went viral. “When I became a mom, I wanted connection as much as I wanted sleep. So I did what many people do: I joined a mom group,” Tisdale wrote. “But this is something no one prepared me for. Mom groups can be toxic, not because moms themselves are toxic people, but because the power dynamics shift to ugly places with mean girl behavior. I know this from personal experience.”
PEOPLE has reached out to representatives for Duff and Koma for comment.
