Ashley Tisdale's mom group tensions stemmed from a "misalignment of values".

The 40-year-old actress has suffered a public falling out with some high-profile friends, including the likes of Hilary Duff, Gaby Dalkin, Meghan Trainor, and Mandy Moore, and an insider has now explained the cause of the tension.

A source told People: "It was a misalignment of values that Ashley decided to make public. Friends naturally drift apart. It didn't warrant a dramatic breakup text."

Ashley - who has daughters Jupiter, four, and Emerson, 15 months - recently discussed leaving her "toxic" group of mom friends in a blog post.

She said: "Here's the thing nobody prepared me for: Mom groups can turn toxic.

"Not because the moms themselves are toxic people, but because the dynamic shifts into an ugly place with mean-girl behaviour. I know this from personal experience."

Ashley explained there were group text chains that "didn't include everyone" and there were "hangouts" she didn't get invited to.

In her essay for The Cut, she went on to open up about how she started to feel "excluded", writing: "I was certain that I'd found my village.

"But over time, I began to wonder whether that was really true. I remember being left out of a couple of group hangs, and I knew about them because Instagram made sure it fed me every single photo and Instagram Story.

"Another time, at one of the mom's dinner parties, I realised where I sat with her - which was at the end of the table, far from the rest of the women. I was starting to feel frozen out of the group, noticing every way that they seemed to exclude me."

The blonde beauty addressed speculation about her original blog post in the essay, calling out "online sleuths" for attempting to figure out the identities of the women involved.

She wrote: "It's one [topic] that has also made wannabe online sleuths try to do some investigating like they're on CSI (please, don't even try - whatever you think is true isn't even close)."