Nestled up the back of Chuck & Sons Brewery in Sydney’s inner west, a table of nine fathers are seated quietly, with concentrated looks on their faces and pints in hand. It would be an ordinary Wednesday night, if it weren’t for the pastel-haired mannequins in front of them – whose long tresses each dad carefully brushes and braids.
They’re here for Pints & Plaits, a 90-minute hairstyling workshop founded this year by hairdresser Jacqueline Schell.
A new mum herself, Schell was inspired by the event series Pints & Ponytails founded by two UK dads in February. Since then, similar workshops have been popping up around the world and going viral on social media.
The workshop teaches participants hairstyles suitable for school, sport or dance, including a ponytail and a French braid. A ticket includes a drink on arrival and a take-home kit with hairstyling accoutrements.
Around the table, conversation meanders from Taylor Swift to Elsa from Disney’s Frozen and Netflix’s hit animated series KPop Demon Hunters. The main character of the latter, Rumi, sports a signature purple braid which has been highly requested by daughters.
Best friends Brian Nguyen and Jonathan Kwok are in attendance, and their main goal is to master Rumi’s braid for their KPop-obsessed daughters.
“When she was younger I did her hair a lot, but she stopped wanting me to do it because mum does it a lot better, and I missed that,” says Nguyen, father to five-year-old Koby.
“I want to be able to do her hair sometimes and not embarrass her; that’d be nice.”
Nguyen loves being a “girl dad”.
“Girls are really sweet. I imagine parenting myself, and I would hate it. I’m not affectionate, I was the worst kid. But my daughter wakes up in the morning and comes and gives me a hug, says ‘I love you dad,’” he says.
Indeed, for Schelle, the workshops are about “fostering a safe, loving environment” for dads to learn a new skill while connecting with other men and, ultimately, their kids.
“Parenting can be really isolating, and there aren’t many spaces where dads can talk,” she says.
“In this day and age, softness in masculinity is frowned upon. This is getting men together in a really casual environment, where there’s no competition and they’re in the same boat,” says Schelle.
In March self-avowed misogynist Andrew Tate shared a video from Pints & Ponytails UK, calling the men involved “cucks”. (Co-founder Lawrence Price hit back, telling the BBC, “If Andrew Tate is criticising what we’re doing, we must be onto a good thing.”)
While some attendees are divorcees or widowers, many are simply dads keen to help share in parenting duties with their partners. Tonight, most signed themselves up.
Jim Carroll came along with son Shou Matsui-Carroll, so he can help with his granddaughters, aged four and seven, before school.
“I’ve learned how to do a ponytail, a basic plait, and now the Elsa braid. I’ve learned a lot actually, because before I was pretty useless at it,” he says.
Australian and international research has found fathers play a key role in daughters’ emotional and social wellbeing.
While Australian mothers continue to take on the majority share of caregiving duties (on average, 1.25 times more than fathers, according to a 2023 report from The Fathering Project), things are changing.
“What it means to be an involved father has evolved across generations,” says Dr Vincent Mancini, a psychologist and senior research fellow at the Kids Research Institute Australia.
“Parents today share far more overlap in roles and responsibilities than in previous generations, when expectations of fathers and mothers were far more rigid. This includes fathers being more actively involved in these types of direct caregiving behaviours.”
Melbourne father Mark Shaw recently attended a similar event, Pints & Ponytails, at Central Club Hotel in North Melbourne, with the dads’ group from his daughter’s school.
A keen athlete, his daughter, 11, often asks for French braids like those worn by Australian rugby union player Charlotte Caslick.
“Most people can probably do a ponytail, but everybody was really keen to learn some new tricks and work out how to do things together, which was really nice to see,” Shaw says.
Having tested his new skills out the next morning before school, Shaw says he hasn’t quite mastered the French braid, but he’s keen to keep learning.
Mancini says it’s the effort that counts.
“What matters most for these kids is not that their dad can now do hair perfectly, but that he showed up for them – a clear signal of his care and dedication.”
Hairdresser and educator Alana Nicolopoulos led the workshop a few weeks ago.
The opportunity had a special significance for the 34-year-old, whose father died when she was 17, around the same time she started hairdressing.
“It was really a full-circle moment because before he died he taught me how to braid hair,” she says.
Nicolopoulos was touched by how the activity helped participants bond among themselves.
“It was almost therapeutic for them because they were chatting about their kids and what stage of life they are going through. They were really connecting with each other, which is so amazing because you have a lot of community groups for mums, but you never see anything for the dads,” she says.
“That was just so rewarding to see these dads open up to each other about dad life.”
Like Jacqueline Schell, publican Vincent McGrath of Central Club Hotel was inspired by similar events overseas. McGrath says the workshop sparked interest among local dance schools, kindergartens and primary schools. He hopes to expand its reach and scope – potentially to cover broader topics like puberty.
A father of two, McGrath knows how special those small moments can be.
“When I do my daughters’ hair, I get the most amount of information out of them,” he says, “because they have to stand still in front of me.
“So you get five minutes of their attention.”
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