Bouncing my one-year-old boy, Sonny, on my lap, I half-heartedly joined in with yet another rendition of Old MacDonald at the mums and toddlers singalong group at my local ceramics cafe.

For six months, I’d been the only stay-at-home dad in a circle of nine new mothers and it wasn’t getting any easier being the token man in a woman’s world.

Bored and embarrassed, my eyes idly wandered around the crowd and snagged on a mother opposite as she unbuttoned her top, and started breastfeeding her baby.

Martin, who has a one-year-old son Sonny (both pictured), was a stay-at-home dad for six months in a circle of nine new mothers

At that uncomfortable moment, our eyes locked. I froze, unable to look away.

‘Do you mind?’ she said, nodding her head towards the door, her intent obvious: she wanted me to clear off. Beetroot-red, I quickly gathered my child and staggered outside, sweating and humiliated.

This was the final straw. I threw in the towel the next day, hired a nanny and decided that, for this man at least, being a stay-at-home dad was a gender equality bridge too far.

We often hear MPs and feminists bleating about how the world is run by the old boys’ network.

But it is my bitter experience that the ‘yummy mummy club’ is a powerful and exclusive girl gang, where men are shunned, and treated as second-class citizens.

So nobody was less surprised than me to read that only a tiny minority of British fathers have signed up to the Coalition government’s much-trumpeted, yet seemingly unpopular, Shared Parental Leave (SPL) system.

He felt awkward about using the family changing rooms around mothers after trips to the swimming pool and felt he couldn't join in with conversations about lactating and labour pains

The scheme was conceived by Nick Clegg to get mums back to work quicker by allowing parents to share up to 50 weeks of leave and 37 weeks of statutory pay.

Yet whichever way you spin it, it has been a dismal flop. Government figures show that while around 285,000 British couples were eligible for SPL, in the first three months of 2016 only 3,000 have taken up the offer - a feeble four per cent.

This spectacular snub isn’t just down to the terrible money: SPL pays a meagre £139.58 a week, or 90 per cent of weekly earnings, whichever is lower.

The father pictured with his one-year-old son Sonny

For many, that would barely cover the rent or mortgage, and mean more work for the other parent. As two thirds of households still have men as the main breadwinner, it’s an economic no-brainer why most couples reject SPL.

And there’s more: many firms pay mothers on maternity leave well above the legal minimum, but SPL is tied to the statutory rate, proving fathers are discriminated against and undervalued compared to mothers.

But I believe there is something much more fundamental behind British men’s wholesale rejection of the scheme and it is this: Fathers are simply not welcome in the world of stay-at-home mums.

It is my bitter experience that the ‘yummy mummy club’ is a powerful and exclusive girl gang, where men are shunned, and treated as second-class citizens

I’m not alone in thinking that. In the SPL report, 55 per cent of British men said their partners had refused to share their maternity leave.

Despite what feminists and egalitarians would have us believe, many mums want ‘their’ year off.

They see ‘Mummy time’ as a birthright - and they don’t want to share it with men. And when men have the temerity to venture into ‘their’ world, we’re made to feel about as welcome as a bout of colic.

We’d agreed I would take up the reins of childcare after my wife, Diana, who’s now 41, returned to her job as a picture editor, after a year’s maternity leave in 2010.

It was around this time that my job as a magazine editor came to a close and, initially, we thought the timings were perfect.

Sonny wouldn’t need a nanny and I would redress the parenting duty imbalance and get to raise my son myself. Yet nothing had prepared me for the tedium, loneliness and nonexistent social life of being a stay-at-home dad.

Martin said: 'I'm ashamed to admit being a stay-at-home dad didn’t give me what I needed to feel like a man. Stay-at-home dads are heroes, I just didn’t have what it takes'

Almost always, I was the only man at kids’ groups, playgrounds, or coffee mornings. Perhaps a little paranoid, I felt like a pariah.

At Sonny’s swimming lessons, I eventually shied away from using the family changing room, where I know he liked to toddle around with the other babies, as I felt like an unwanted voyeur at best, and a sex pest at worst.

I knew my own wife, like many new mothers, was suffering from crushing body self-esteem issues post-birth, so what right did I have to subject a room full of unconfident women to my male gaze?

On the rare occasions I did brave the communal changing area, the room would fall silent, forcing me to do a mumbling U-turn and skulk to the empty men’s changing room next door.

I’m ashamed to admit being a stay-at-home dad didn’t give me what I needed to feel like a man. Stay-at-home dads are heroes, I just didn’t have what it takes

In the pool, I’d go through the motions, swooshing Sonny in circles and making duck noises as he giggled away.

But in the cafe area afterwards, the conversation would once again turn to endless, alienating, woman-only chats about lactation, caesareans and labour pains, as mums forged new friendships over common bonds.

I know these groups can be intimidating for women, too: my wife had told me she’d suffered terrible confidence issues trying to fit into the mum cliques during her year’s maternity, so imagine how awkward it was for me?

How could I join in these often graphic, medical conversations? How could I make friends with people who, aside from the toddlers on our laps, I had absolutely nothing in common with?

After accidentally making eye-contact with a breastfeeding woman who then told him to leave the room, Martin decided to hire a nanny

My loneliness soon gave way to ever-greater paranoia. Once in my local playground I was taking some photos of Sonny on a swing, when a mother, on the adjacent seat, huffed angrily and whisked her daughter away.

Was she accusing me of slyly taking snaps of her child, I wondered? Of being a paedophile? Or was my sense of victimhood getting the better of me?

No matter the noble sentiment that being a stay-at-home dad is ‘the best job in the world’, among my peers I found it carried no social kudos whatsoever.

On rare nights out at the pub with friends I became the butt of all jokes. When I insisted that looking after a one-year-old was more exhausting and demanding than my previous job, managing a team of 25 - that just made them laugh more.

Martin said that he had tried to start a dad’s group via a local internet forum out of desperation - but no men responded

They’d then wind me up saying: ‘Do you wear an apron?’ and ‘Do you breastfeed?’

Looking back, I know it was silly male banter, but I returned from the pub feeling bruised. Was I that same man who used to regale everyone with tales of celebrities, junkets and office high jinks?

Tensions also grew with my wife, who’d chastise me for not attending baby groups she had organised. I felt a total failure. We bickered and our sex life dwindled. I just didn’t feel like a man.

Friendless during never-ending days, and feeling rejected by the mums’ club, I forlornly tried to make daddy mates via the internet.

But there was no men’s equivalent of Mumsnet, a place where I felt men were ridiculed.

In desperation, I tried to start a dad’s group via a local internet forum, but no men responded. Was I the only man doing this? Or were we all unable to reach out for help? I’ll never know.

When Martin became a dad for the second time, to Dolly, who is now two, he vowed to put his bitter experience behind him

That incident with the breastfeeding woman was the final straw. I hired a nanny, the £90 daily outlay the price of my failure, but a price worth paying.

I’m ashamed to admit being a stay-at-home dad didn’t give me what I needed to feel like a man. Stay-at-home dads are heroes, I just didn’t have what it takes.

British dads are getting better. There are far more men pushing buggies around these days.

I always make sure I say a manly: ‘All right, mate?’ when I pass one in the street, and talk to them in playgrounds, as that would have meant the world to me in my darkest days.

When I became a dad for the second time, to Dolly, who is now two, I vowed to put my bitter experience behind me.

I now work from home, as does my wife, and we have a far healthier work/life balance.