Hey son, check out my iPot…
It’s the latest disposition sweeping the nation, a social and cultural disease mightier than the credit crunch, fuel poverty and negative equity combined.
No, I’m not talking about Claire from the Apprentice, this is…..’Cool Dad Syndrome’.
Got a cool Dad? Does he know his Kooks from his Killers? His Puma States from his Vans Half Cabs? His iPod shuffle from his iPod nano?
If the answer to all the above is ‘yes’, then you must have had one heck of an expensive Father’s Day this weekend huh?
Luckily for me, my Dad is the consummate square; a square’s square if you will. I’d like to think some of this has rubbed off on me (see the Genesis comments in this gem of a post).
He doesn’t download music (the latest Neil Diamond CD picked up alongside the fortnightly shop will suffice), he certainly doesn’t skateboard, and aside from his prized digital weathervane (which has now usurped the long-range AM/FM radio in the obsession stakes), he can see straight through the futility of modern gadgets and finds them totally dispensable.
In essence, I didn’t have to re-mortgage the flat in order to finance Father’s Day this year, which is why I laughed out loud (usually reserved exclusively for QI and Mariella Frostrup’s Agony Aunt column in the Observer Magazine, the insensitive soul that I am) when I read the following in a press release from Friends Provident, a UK pension provider:
“Some fathers feel that their children pile pressure on them to be their very own ‘Daddy Cool’, with 34% of dads revealing that they have bought the latest gadgets and fashionable clothes for themselves due to direct pressure from their children”
I beg your pardon? The hilarity continues…..
“Dads say they are spending out nearly £800 a year buying the latest gadgets and fashions for themselves and their children. Yet just over one in three say they feel that they have made enough insurance provision to ensure their children would be well provided for should anything happen to them.”
Amazing!
So if their child says “Dad, I really like Theo Walcott, I want you to look like him, act like him, and generally be him”, over a third of UK Dads would presumably get botox, liposuction, a haircut, a whole new wardrobe, a full Arsenal strip, training strip, maybe a cap, fancy earrings, a 20 year old WAG and return flights on Emirates airlines to anywhere?
But if the kid falls over, breaks his leg and needs specialist treatment, that same Dad won’t be able to pay for this treatment having spent nearly all his disposable cash on a pair of diamond encrusted tweezers?
Whatever happened to the days where Dads dismissed such requests with a firm but fair ‘stop being utterly ridiculous Daniel’, and proceeded to set a sterling example to their children, rather than this role-reversal nonsense?
I’m always wary of mums and daughters who describe the nature of their relationship as being more akin to ‘best friends’ than mother/daughter. The parents should wear the trousers in that particular alliance, end of story.
Am I right, or completely out of touch?
Is being out of touch cool?
Ask a 9 year old.
