He has been called "the best family artist around" by Billboard and dubbed "The Pied Piper of Children's Music" by Parents magazine. What I like about Tom Chapin is that when kids listen to his music they act like kids.

Put on Britney Spears or S Club 7, and the under-10s try to dance like they're actually 15. Play a bit of Tom Chapin, and the kids act silly, jump around, listen to the lyrics, crack jokes inspired by the lyrics, dress in silly costumes and dive-bomb from the back of the sofa. They act like kids, in other words. Tom Chapin is no-pressure music - as in no-pressure on kids to grow up too fast, and no-pressure on parents to censor the CD before the kids listen to it. Chapin calls it "parent friendly" music and, somewhat self-effacingly, "car music", since in the US there are millions of families who would not consider a long car journey without "Tom".

Chapin's latest CD, This Pretty Planet (his sixth "family" CD in a decade), was nominated for a Grammy award in the "Best Musical Album for Children" category. It's his third consecutive Grammy nomination. Over coffee in Dun Laoghaire, Chapin (55) shared the philosophy behind his successful dominance of that niche market "between Barney and Britney": "This is family music. With the age group I'm writing for, this is the last time parents come to concerts with their kids."

Let's face it, once they even get a whiff of becoming teenagers, the kids don't want to be seen dead near their parents, much less enjoying the same music. So between the ages of four and 12 there's a window of opportunity where families can bond together in a concert atmosphere. It's also a window of opportunity for Chapin, who has found a freedom to do what he likes: "A family record is the last bastion of freedom in the recording world. You can be incredibly eclectic and nobody bothers you about it."

What Chapin tries to do for kids, is to "open their eyes and imagination and interest. Kids have wide open ears. So we use different styles - boogie, folk, jazz, salsa, classical. Once you've heard Don't Make Me Go to School Today, you'll never hear Swan Lake the same way every again."

Children's preoccupations are taken very seriously as song subjects by Chapin and the "consortium of Dads" who write and perform with him - amongst them John Cobert, who was in John Lennon's last band. The songs concern everything from recycling (from a dinosaur's point of view) to the vagaries of friendship and playground politics. The lyrics have worthy messages, without being preachy, and are witty, sophisticated and complex, without being condescending. These are the two main reasons, I think, parents get as hooked on the music as the kids do. Chapin himself comes from a strong musical family. His brother, two years older than he, was Harry Chapin and Tom performed with him. Best known for his hits Taxi and Cats in the Cradle, Harry Chapin died at the age of 38 in 1981 when his Volkswagen Beetle was hit from behind by a truck on a Long Island freeway. Tom's first child, Abigail, had been born only two weeks earlier and Harry had seen her once. It's always been a sadness for Tom that his children never had the joy of knowing their exceptional uncle. The Rolling Stone obituary described Harry Chapin as "a pure product of the Fifties world of Greenwich Village and Brooklyn Heights". You could say the same for Tom - since both were the sons of Big Jim Chapin, a jazz drummer with Tommy Dorsey's and Woody Herman's bands. The boys were reared to perform from childhood - and they were also encouraged to have a social conscience (Harry Chapin always performed half his concerts for charitable causes). It was that "lack of cool" that gave Chapin a negative image and a reputation for being preachy and didactic, said Rolling Stone. But then it added: "Harry Chapin's function in the music world was not to be cool. He was `supposed' to be awkward and overtly unhip; he was `supposed' to stand in contrast to the glibness and callousness of many of his peers. If the ungainly accents and sputtering diction of some of Chapin's songs can't kill their power, that is because more important things than simple aesthetics are at work in those tunes, and because Chapin wasn't working in a pop context of craftsmanship and cool but from the folk-music traditions of the American left."

You can say the same of Tom Chapin 20 years later. Tom doesn't give a hoot for being cool or uncool. He is singing for families during those wonderful uncool years, in which nobody in the family cares what anybody else is listening to or wearing - and those years last for all too short a time.

Tom Chapin's Irish tour dates: Cork, Everyman Palace Theatre - Friday, March 9th, 8 p.m. (021-4501673); Galway, Town Hall Theatre - Saturday, March 10th, 3 p.m. (091 5697777); Dublin, National Concert Hall - Sunday, March 11th, 2001, 3.15 p.m. (01 4170000).