Cooler Than My Kids: A Handbook for Hip Dads
By (Author) Paul Symons
Headline Publishing Group
Wildfire
8th July 2025
8th May 2025
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Parenting: advice and issues
306.87420207
Hardback
176
Width 142mm, Height 218mm, Spine 22mm
280g
You've seen them at the back of gig or blaring Radio 6 on their over-ear headphones; they're the ones in Doc Martens queueing outside Rough Trade in unflattering hats that hide their receding hair lines; you may even have one of your own - that's right, it's the hipster dad!
Are you a middle-aged man who still loves discovering new bands and going to gigs - albeit standing at the back nodding appreciatively rather than down the front in the moshpit Do you make playlists for your kids and dazzle them with your encyclopaedic musical knowledge at every opportunity, especially if that gives you an opportunity to explain why bands were better in the 90s Do you own a large collection of band T-shirts collected over the years, even though some of them seem to be inexplicably tighter these days Other Hipster Dad signifiers: he loves vinyl; gigs and festivals (glamping only); Carhartt, Converse and Fred Perry; left-of-centre politics; Sunday-morning cycling clubs; Stewart Lee and Feargal Sharkey (because of the rivers); sourdough bread and posh coffee; a bit of creaky lunchtime yoga. Essentially, he is a good man, who cares for his kids and his aged parents. He might be lacking his own father's hands-on DIY and car-maintenance skills, but he knows his Suede from his IDLES, his Big Thief from his Boygenius. In other words, he's an expert in the things that really matter. Or as Jarvis Cocker once sang: 'He'll teach you stuff, although he's looking rough.'Paul Symons works in the media, because of course he does. He has written for national newspapers and worked for leading book publishers, and lives in a now-fashionable part of south east London that he discovered before anyone else. He is married with two teenage daughters and labours under the delusion that he is cooler than the rest of his household.