When Amanda Paneduro scrolls through photos on her iPhone, she has trouble picking out her favorite mother-daughter pic. Was it the one they took while partying at nightclub LIV in South Beach during a wild girls’ weekend? Dancing onstage together with electro-rap duo LMFAO at club Glo on Long Island? Or maybe the time at the rooftop in the Meatpacking District when a creepy older guy hit on both mom and daughter?
“Nobody really knows she’s my mother,” says 19-year-old Amanda with a laugh. Tonight, the two are holding court at the Gansevoort Hotel rooftop bar, clad in black leather jackets, skintight pants and sky-high heels.
“We have so much fun together — she’s my best friend,” gushes Amanda, a college student from Jericho, Long Island, of her 49-year-old separated mom, Ilyssa.
“We share everything,” she continues, including Ilyssa’s prized collection of Céline and Chanel bags and YSL and Louboutin shoes.
But they draw the line at sharing men.
“A lot of times the same guy will try to hit on both of us,” says Amanda. “We attract positive attention. If we’re lucky, we’ll be invited to someone’s table. She’s like going out with a friend, very understanding. She’s not super-overprotective.”
The pair are known to party till 4 a.m., then hit nearby Artichoke Pizza to refuel. They’ve been socializing together since Amanda was 16, and they’re such regulars on the scene that she doesn’t even get carded anymore.
Celebrity culture and reality TV are already awash with mothers and daughters bonding over bottle service: Bravo’s “Princesses: Long Island” features club-hopping duo Amanda Bertoncini, 27, and her mom, Babs, 52. Madonna, 55, and 17-year-old daughter Lourdes have been photographed at clubs in New York and abroad for years. Brittny Gastineau, 29, and her 53-year-old mom, Lisa, famously partied recklessly on the reality TV show “Gastineau Girls,” and Dina, 51, and Lindsay Lohan, 27, have never met a club banquette they didn’t want to dance atop.
Middle-aged New York moms are following suit — with wild nights of clubbing now supplanting the tame brunches and mani-pedi dates that might have defined parental bonding of yore.
Often recently unattached, these moms say the opportunities to socialize with their still-married peers are few and far between.
“I have no one my age — they’re at a different speed,” says 45-year-old divorced mom-of-three Nicole Levine, who runs her own cleaning service in the city. “That’s why I have to go with my daughter.”
Some, like Nicole, say they never had the chance to sow their wild oats, having given up nightlife for the sandbox scene in their youth. “I got married when I was 20, divorced at 26, and this is the first time in my life I can just pick up and go,” says Nicole, who regularly socializes with her 22-year-old daughter, Vanesa.
“I was a child myself when I had them, so I always raised them as a friend. We grew up together and acted like a team,” she adds.
The joined-at-the-hip duo has partied in destinations across several continents, including Ibiza and Thailand — and are known to keep their relationship a secret.
“I never tell people she’s my daughter. Once I tell them she’s my daughter, it becomes the whole focal point,” admits Nicole.
“I say she’s my cousin.”
And that’s just fine with daughter Vanesa, who is joining her mother this week in Berlin, where they hope to partake in some Oktoberfest-style celebrations.
“Going out with my mother is like going out with one of the girls. She looks and dresses like one of us, she’s a social butterfly,” says Vanesa, a college student who lives downtown. “She doesn’t judge me for what I do, nor does she police me. I do pretty much whatever I want and it’s a great feeling knowing I have someone to look out for me.
“It’s hard to foresee a time when we will stop partying together. Even 20 years from now she will still be dancing on tables.”
But while Nicole says she was “a pretty strict mom” when her kids were growing up, not everyone’s on board with these new kinds of May-December duos.
“It’s a situation that’s fraught with danger. It may appear fine on the outside, but it can backfire,” says Dr. Kathryn Smerling, an UES family therapist. “These parents want to be friends with their kids and close the generation gap, but don’t know how to parent. Yes, you can be a BFF with your mom — but being a BFF has a limit and it defies what the role of a parent is.”
Jessica Van Horn, a 23-year-old Manhattan-based publicist, agrees. “My mother and I have an extremely close relationship, but there are boundaries that we don’t cross. Women that are [in their 50s] should have already gotten that stage of their life out of their system,” says Van Horn. “Go enjoy a cocktail at a lounge with your husband, or watch a live band play at a local bar. Please stay out of the club and, I repeat, do not wear miniskirts!”
But pre-party primping is all part of the fun for party-mom Ilyssa and daughter Amanda.
“Dressing is always an adventure because we rely on each other for support on how our outfits look. We share my bathroom and get pretty listening to club music to get us in the mood,” says Ilyssa.
For Susan Vail, a 58-year-old Stamford, Conn., resident who works in finance, there’s nothing wrong with a little mother-daughter bonding over cocktails. After all, she hit the town with her own mom when she was a kid.
“When I was 18 and in New Jersey, my mom was a single mom when it wasn’t a popular time. One night, she asked me to go to a bar popular with her age group, with one caveat: She said, ‘Don’t call me “Mom” — call me Betty!’ ” recalls Vail. “I blew her cover in front of a guy!
“I grew up that way being close with my mom, and I think my daughters enjoy my company.”
Vail’s older daughter, Alex Wollman, 23, has no complaints about their unconventional relationship. The publicist and her mom danced their way across the Mediterranean this summer.
“It was 10 straight days of partying,” says Wollman. “We’d get distracted with the time and stay out till 2 a.m. Sometimes people feel weird going out with their parents [and] drinking, but I love it.”
Next up for the mom-daughter duo?
“I’m really into electronic dance music, and she said she wants to come to one of the shows,” says Wollman.
“I was thinking about bringing her to a smaller one — at Webster Hall or Terminal 5.”