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Brace yourself, dude. Generation X, that misanthropic mass of marginally employed slackers, has finally started to reproduce. They have traded in their beat-up Volkswagens and New York Dolls T-shirts for bigger beat-up Volkswagens and baby New York Dolls T-shirts. They go to play groups, wipe vomit off contemporary sofas and spend hours moshing with toddlers to the latest Killers album.

It's all very hip and new and guess what? They want to tell us all about it -- in books, movies and magazine articles, and over organic protein drinks at your local family dance party.

In his new book, Alternadad, American writer Neal Pollack explores a hipster's journey through fatherhood. It involves a lot of watching The Wiggles in a dumpy row house in Austin, Tex., where he and his wife choose to live because hey, South by Southwest rocks.

This, apparently, is very different from watching The Wiggles in a suburb of Phoenix, like the one in which Pollack grew up. Like many Gen X hipster types, he spends most of the book desperately trying to avoid replicating the mundane middle-class family life of his childhood. Unlike his parents, he is determined to raise a "cool kid." Except that conventional life (or "corporate parenting culture," as he calls it) has clearly come home to roost. He's sitting watching The Wiggles with a two-year-old, after all. And while that's nice, there's nothing alternative about it.

As Canadian writer Adam Sternberg put it in his clever New York magazine cover story about this new tribe of alternaparents last spring: "Here's the bad news about kids: They're not cool. Especially little kids. Left to their own devices, they don't dress well, they have no sense of style and, frankly, their musical taste sucks. Here's the good news about kids: They're defenceless. So if you want to put a Ramones T-shirt on your two-year-old, you don't need his permission."

Alternaparenting, it seems, is all about putting your kid in the right T-shirt. And not cutting you kid's hair (because Kate Hudson and Chris Robinson didn't). And furnishing the baby's room with a rocking Eames chair (even though it's uncomfortable). Other than that, though, it sounds pretty much the same as regular parenting. But don't tell that to an alternaparent.

Alternaparents think that they're the first generation who decided to maintain their identities after giving birth. They think getting their kids to rock out to the Hives is revolutionary. Except they're forgetting something. The generation before them did the same thing. Except it wasn't the Hives, it was the Beatles.

Listen, I think it's great that people are having kids. Kids rock. And I would never begrudge anyone the right to revel in being a parent. But I have limited patience for people who like to tell long meandering stories about how "crazy" their lives have become now that they have had kids. I have even more limited patience for memoirs, such as Pollack's, that contain pages of dialogue like the following description of his 18-month-old son playing a game while waiting for a haircut at Toys "R" Us.

"Bloop bloop bloop!" the game said.

"Ah hah hah! Fff-fff!"

He then unpaused the game.

"Ah-hah-hah-hah!"

It was time to pause again.

"Bloop bloop bloop!"

"Fff-fff!"

"Elijah Pollack?" his stylist said.

Elijah looked up, surprised to hear his name.

"Huh?" he said.

"Are you ready?"

"Dah!"

Seriously. Pages. Which makes it clear to me that all this talk of the importance of punk rock and downing tequila shots between play dates is nothing more than a flimsy excuse to do what self-absorbed parents have always done: Inundate everyone around them with stories about how special and cute their kids are. And while alternaparents are clever at masking their message in self-deprecating terms, the point of the story is always the same: Isn't my kid adorable?

Even more tedious than the cute-kid stories (which most of us have come to accept and tolerate) is the alternaparent stance of, "I'm a Dad now -- isn't that ironic?" No. It's not. I know you partied hard in your 20s. I know you made art your priority. I know you vowed to never sell out by owning a car or a house or any of that bourgeois crap. I can see how surprised you are by your own ability to do a 180 on this position and become the guy in the park with the baby jogger. But guess what? No one else is surprised. You are a mammal. Your job on this planet is to procreate. And no amount of rave-going or ecstasy-dropping was ever going to change that.

Changing a diaper with a Jagermeister hangover is still just changing a diaper.

Toronto writer David Eddie is the author of Housebroken: Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad, a book that stands as a testimony to the fact that it's possible to write about modern parenting without endless anecdotes involving sippy cups.

"It would be nice for people to have kids and never even talk about it," he told me over the phone this week. "Even when people ask me about my kids, I say 'They're fine,' and change the topic. Because the truth is nobody really cares. Kids are inherently boring. There's a way to be a grownup and a good parent and not make a big deal out of that and also be a function member of society. Shoot me if I ever start using my kids and pets as material."

I'd make the same promise, but dude, I'm only a mammal.

lmclaren@globeandmail.com