Getting a teenager to call you cool is no small feat, but Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka appear to have pulled it off. The couple recently confirmed that their 15-year-old twins, Harper and Gideon, have given both dads a thumbs-up in the coolness department, a verdict that any parent of a teen knows is not easily earned.
Harris and Burtka, one of Hollywood’s most visible same-sex parenting couples, addressed the question head-on in a recent interview covered by E! Online.
According to the outlet, Harper and Gideon’s cool-dad endorsement came directly from the twins themselves, making it all the more meaningful given how notoriously stingy teenagers tend to be with that particular compliment.
The lighthearted exchange offered a rare, candid window into daily life in their household as the kids move deeper into adolescence.
What Does It Actually Mean To Be A Cool Dad?
The question of whether Harris and Burtka qualify as cool dads is more layered than it might seem. Fatherly, which named the pair to its first annual Cool Dads list, tackled the definition head-on in an editorial piece.
The publication’s staff argued that the label has less to do with parenting style and more to do with who a father is as a person beyond his role as a parent.
Crucially, the Fatherly team took a firm stance on who should and shouldn’t be handing out the title. As the editors wrote in their piece on cool-dad criteria, “children should not be empowered to determine coolness because they’re not good at it.
They tend to need time and distance to assess the qualities of both their parents and other people’s parents.” In other words, Harper and Gideon’s endorsement, while flattering, may not be the most reliable measure of their fathers’ actual cool-dad status.
So what does qualify? According to Fatherly’s editorial framework, the men who genuinely earn the designation are those who bring passion, self-confidence, and drive to their lives outside the family, while never letting any of that crowd out their love for their kids.
As the editors noted, part of earning the title is about wearing the responsibility of fatherhood well, and accepting, as they put it, that “the performance review will arrive too late to help.”
Why The ‘Cool Dad’ Label Is More Complicated Than It Sounds
There’s an inherent tension baked into the phrase itself. Fatherly’s editors noted that cultural assumptions have long positioned fatherhood and coolness as opposing forces, which is precisely what makes the combination so striking when it works.
The publication drew a clear line between being a cool person who happens to be a dad versus performing coolness as a parenting strategy.
The latter, they argued, is actually counterproductive. Good parenting, in their framing, is about attentiveness and presence, not optics.
That distinction matters for families watching Harris and Burtka navigate public life. The couple has never positioned themselves as parenting influencers or style icons first.
They’re performers and partners who also happen to be raising two teenagers, and that ordering, cool identity alongside genuine parental commitment, is exactly what Fatherly’s framework describes as the real hallmark of cool dadness.
Raising Teenagers In The Public Eye
Harper and Gideon turned 15 this year, putting them squarely in the phase of adolescence when parental approval matters least to kids and peer perception matters most.
For Harris and Burtka, navigating that dynamic comes with the added complexity of raising children whose family has been publicly visible since before the twins were born.
The fact that both teens are apparently comfortable enough with their dads to hand out a genuine compliment, rather than the eye-roll that most parents of 15-year-olds know well, says something about the household environment the couple has built.
Harris and Burtka have been raising their twins in the public eye for 15 years, and their willingness to talk openly about the ordinary, sometimes awkward work of parenting teenagers makes them genuinely useful role models, not just for same-sex parents, but for any family trying to stay connected to their kids through adolescence.
The cool-dad question is a fun hook, but the real story underneath it is about two parents who have clearly stayed present and engaged long enough for their teenagers to actually want to claim them.
