Why dads are learning to braid hair in the pub

It’s 6.30pm on Good Friday, and the streets of the City of London feel deserted. Most of the pubs are quiet, except for one room, downstairs in a City-boy bar, which has a long table filled with men sipping pints in near silence. The reason? Studied concentration as they try to brush the deliberately matted hair of a mannequin in front of each of them into a ponytail. “Once you nail this,” Mathew Lewis-Carter, one of their pink hairbrush-brandishing leaders for the evening, promises, “it’s a game-changer.” 

Traditionally, hair styling has fallen to the women in the family. But Lewis-Carter and Lawrence Price, organisers of the event, which is called Pints and Ponytails, and co-hosts of a popular podcast about fatherhood, feel that millennial fathers like them want more of a role. Along with easing their partner’s workload, they want a closer connection with their daughters. The men here seem to agree.

“At the moment I only do [my daughter’s] hair if there’s no other option,” Seb Brantigan, who works in AI sales and has travelled from Suffolk for the two-hour class, says. “She used to only want her mum for everything, but now she’s nearly three and letting me do more and more. Life with her already feels like it’s going so quickly, and I can see that [doing her hair is] another way of spending time with her.”

After Lewis-Carter and Price put clips from their first two events in February and March on social media, they went viral, with nearly 30mn views. This evening’s tickets sold out in 10 minutes, with a following event in Manchester selling just as fast. A few men have come in pairs, but most are solo, like Justin Edgar, a single dad who lives in south London and has six- and eight-year-old daughters who “always complain that their mum does their hair better than me. I’ve got to sort it out.”

It is, of course, more than just hair. Which is lucky because an hour in, watching some of these attempts at a high ponytail, I worry for them in the morning when they will face a sharp-tongued three-year-old. For Lewis-Carter, the impetus initially for The Secret Life of Dads podcast — and now the real-life meet ups — was his experience with male postnatal depression after his daughter was born nearly five years ago. “I could see my wife and daughter were this incredible team, and I felt so disconnected from them both. I felt so alone. Getting up day after day used to scare me.” 

He already knew fellow Welshman Price from extreme fitness events, but they bonded when Price, a former rugby player, admitted that he had suffered from severe anxiety and burnout from the first few years of parenting. “We realised that there wasn’t a space for dads to talk about this kind of thing,” Lewis-Carter says. Their podcast, which they started two and a half years ago, interviews experts on topics ranging from processing grief to raising resilient children. “We’re just trying to figure out what it means to be a modern dad,” Price adds. 

The meet ups are an extension of the podcast. “We wanted to get dads into a physical space,” Price says. “Research suggests that men communicate better when doing something with their hands, side by side, so the mannequins really help.”

Lewis-Carter shares his story with the group, and encourages the men at the table to share with their neighbours the biggest challenge they’ve encountered. “Men get a bad rep for not talking about their feelings,” he tells me as the hubbub in the room rises. “But they do want to do it, they just don’t always feel like they have permission to do it.” He drifts over to a man attempting to plait his doll’s hair with only one hand, leaning over his shoulders and gently redemonstrating.

This sensitive approach to fatherhood has attracted the condemnation of right-wing influencer and self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate, who reposted an image of the Pints and Ponytails night, criticising it. Price and Lewis-Carter are unperturbed. “We’re trying to change the conversation about masculinity,” Price says. “The dads who turn up are really brave. They want to break stereotypes most of us have grown up with and are sticking two fingers up at that toxic manosphere world.”

They aren’t the first to teach dads to braid hair. For their first two events they had sessions led by Annis Waugh, who founded the hair braiding business, Braid Maidens, in 2021 and launched a specialist night teaching men, called Braids and Beers, four years ago. She has just run her 45th class. In Brisbane there is a weekly Glitter and Braids event for dads, while in San Francisco, artist Strider Patton began posting videos to his account @Dad.Braids on Instagram in 2024 about braiding his daughter’s hair. He has since amassed millions of views and now sells online courses and a $199 toolkit in the shape of a metal toolbox containing combs, clips and spray. Patton says he’s turned what for him was just a task — getting kids ready in the morning — into intentional time together where “I can just be present with her or ask her about things in her life. It’s a little daily ritual that I hope is setting a strong foundation for a life together.”

Back in London, the atmosphere in the room has turned jubilant. “I’m sweating,” a man in a plaid shirt declares, as he leans back, having finished his plaited pigtails first. “Yes mate!” the others chorus. It’s quite the transformation from two hours ago, when I saw him and his neighbour, wearing a “GIRL DAD” T-shirt, attempting to shape one doll’s hair into a ponytail using both of their brushes.

There are some final tips from Lewis-Carter and Price, including the sage words that three-year-olds will not be as still as the mannequins, nor necessarily grateful for the effort their dads have put into learning. There’s also the advice to not let a partner step in if it doesn’t go right straight away. “Because what I do think you’ll find,” Lewis-Carter says, “is that while it’s great to get a new skill, what you’re really going to end up with is an even deeper bond with your daughter.”

David Lee, who has been huddled over in deep concentration all night, is hoping that comes at any age. Unlike most of the fathers here, whose little girls are infants, his daughter is 21. “I’ve only brushed her hair a few times in her life, I missed out on this,” he says with a shy smile. “I want to surprise her with my new skills when she comes home from college.”

Follow us on Instagram and sign up for Fashion Matters, your weekly newsletter about the fashion industry

Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.