Pints & Periods: Knix is bringing dads into a conversation long coded as maternal

Beer slushies, burgers and a period expert: inside Pints & Periods, Knix's Toronto event teaching dads to handle the period talk without freezing up. 

On June 15, the Monday before Father's Day, Kt by Knix — the period underwear brand for teens — is turning its Queen Street West store in Toronto into something between a bar and a classroom. The event, called Pints & Periods, pairs beer slushies from Bellwoods Brewery and burgers from Rosie's with a live conversation led by a period expert. The audience is dads. The subject is how to talk to a kid about menstruation without freezing up.

Knix is calling on fathers and father figures "who show up for the girls in their lives," and the night is built around easing the awkwardness more than teaching anatomy. Kids shouldn't have to handle their periods alone, the logic goes, and dads shouldn't feel helpless when the subject comes up. Attendees go home with a period kit to pass along to their kid. Founder Joanna Griffiths floated the idea on Instagram and asked whether the company should run more events like it, which suggests Knix is testing the concept rather than committing to a series.

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The event steps into parenting work that used to be filed under "mom's job": the close, slightly uncomfortable business of walking a kid through puberty. A growing number of fathers want a place in that, and the "girl dad" label has become shorthand for the idea that being a good father means engaging with experiences you don't personally share. Millennial and Gen Z dads want to be far more involved than many of their own fathers were, and Knix gives them a low-stakes way in: a couple of beers and permission to admit they don't have the answers. It's the same nerve Pints & Ponytails hit earlier this year with their braiding class for dads. The appetite is real, and it's for the ordinary, daily caregiving that men were once quietly excused from.