LAST week, my greatly esteemed colleague Tim Ridgway wrote on these pages about the “cults” that we in Brighton live alongside.

Along with yoga addicts and Lycra-clad cyclists, he included moaning mums, writing, “Yes, we get it – you have a child. But that doesn’t mean that we all want to hear about it.

"Nor do we want to listen about how hard life is when it basically involves sipping tea with other mums, talking loudly in libraries and going to baby yoga.

"Not to mention blocking pavements with Chelsea tractor-sized buggies. Mothercare? Should be mothers: beware.”

Predictably, you can discern from this that Tim does not have children and that, given that I am responding to his comments at all, you can tell I do have children.

Rather unpredictably, I suspect, I do agree with him. To a certain extent. You see, I have been on both sides of the great divide: pre-motherhood, I was one of those young professionals obsessed with my career who only wanted to talk about work, work, work, and viewed mothers with small children as rather like aliens.

I felt little connection with women pushing babies and toddlers around in prams and pushchairs, and, like Tim, saw them as a nuisance in a cafe or restaurant when I wanted to have a civilised adult conversation.

So I can see where he is coming from, especially as he is a bloke. The minutiae of motherhood can hardly be an irresistible topic of conversation for a young childless man to listen to.

Twentysomethings sans children crave a grown-up world – having not long left their teenhood behind, they lean towards sophistication, to new ideas, to political discussions about Isis, to solving the world’s problems.

They don’t want to hear mothers discussing how much sleep they got last night because the very subject of parenting takes them back to their childhood – and at this time in their lives that’s the last place they want to be.

But now let’s look at this moaning mothers situation another way. Look at it from the point of view of the mothers. Tim, jokingly (I hope!), refers to mothers moaning about “how hard life is”.

Well, has he thought about how poor mothers feel: having had endless sleepless nights, changed a thousand smelly nappies and stopped their toddler from trying to kill themselves a million times, all they want is to sit down and have a relaxing cup of tea with other mums in a cafe.

Instead they’re forced to listen to working people moaning loudly over their lattes about how hard life at work is.

Whines of “They’re threatening redundancy” or “We’re not getting a pay rise this year” must be anathema to mothers’ ears – because they need to discuss the important business of how to bring up their child correctly, whether breast milk or formula milk is best for their child’s health, or how to deal with post-natal depression.

I’m not being facetious: these subjects are important because these mothers are nurturing and bringing up a new generation – and what is more important in life than the care and wellbeing of your precious baby?

I understand this world of motherhood because, of course, I’ve been there too. And I know how important it is for mothers to have this social interaction, whether it annoys other people in the process or not.

In particular, it is hard for first-time mothers, who are completely immersed in the huge and frightening task of caring for a new baby, and should not be expected to stay at home alone.

They need not only company of other mothers, but also their help and advice.

For a mother in her home on her own with a tiny dependent baby, small problems can grow into huge dilemmas, but sharing them can halve them.

Meeting the other mothers was a great joy for me, because I had a toddler and was five months pregnant when we moved to Brighton and knew no-one.

Friendly, open and generous, they made life fun and sociable for me, for which I shall always be grateful, and they helpfully pointed out mother-and-toddler clubs, the library and other places that welcomed mothers with small children.

They knew, you see, what I needed.

Motherhood is like a club – or, as Tim puts it, a cult – and until you join it, you can’t possibly hope to understand it.

Perhaps when Tim becomes a father, he will start to sympathise with the mothers who moan about how hard life is – because he will be living it himself.

Good luck, Tim!