Neal Pollack doesn’t bother throwing up any sort of hipster ruse. He drops the terms “poo” and “blankie” on the first page of the prologue to Alternadad, his frequently amusing and disarmingly touching memoir about his journey from barhopping single crank to family-centric paternal semi-softie.

It’s not the only example of jarring, mainstream cutesiness in this book by the oft-cynical satirist. But lest you think Pollack — whose work is often wildly imaginative fiction involving himself — has been consumed by baby talk, know that the book also contains early passages referencing the anal leakage of his girlfriend-turned-wife’s cat named Growltigger.

The reality of that duality powers Alternadad (Pantheon, 290 pp. $23.95). It’s a duality born from a cultural shift. Like no small number of ’90s hipster types, Pollack found himself first pondering family and fatherhood in his 30s, an age when many of the previous generation’s parents were sending kids off to grade school.

A subgeneration bucked George Bernard Shaw’s assertion that youth is wasted on the young and sucked some sort of booze-soaked marrow out of life before starting to gnaw on the bone, snarling at the mere suggestion of domesticity and responsibility.

Then came 30. It’s followed not by 31, but 35. That’s the rough span of Alternadad, which springs into action when a pair of Pollack’s friends — “a college student and an unemployed, mentally ill musician” — enlist him to be a sort of documentarian and emergency contact for their impending delivery, which he’d planned to turn into a story.

“I found myself shaking and profoundly moved,” he writes of the aftermath. “It was like I’d seen a Faces of Death video, but in reverse.”

Pollack humorously and quickly somersaults through courtship with his wife Regina (she’s this comedy’s very gifted straight man), from a magical singles ad to a regrettable declaration that he was so comfortable with their relationship that he couldn’t see wrecking it with kids.

Eep.

Before long Taking Charge of Your Fertility finds its way to his coffee table.

While Regina takes all the proper steps toward parenthood, Pollack documents his final months of heel-digging: “I ... had increased my consumption of beer, marijuana and red meat, and I also spent a lot of time biting my nails.”

Alternadad reads a lot like a peppery travelogue, which makes perfect sense since it’s about navigation, albeit of a different sort. All the fear, ignorance, outrage and confusion of hopping into the wrong side of a car and driving through some foreign country is here.

By the end, there also are appreciation, love and understanding.

But that takes some time.

Few things are funnier than other people’s anxieties, and Pollack presents himself as all but consumed by his. So no big surprise that many of the book’s funniest moments arrive before son Elijah.

He cringes at most aspects of impending parenthood, notably a new wave of hipster baby chic that “makes me want to go to Wal-Mart.”

There’s haggling over names, naturally, and obligatory head-butting with doctors and health-care providers. There’s also some desperate clutching to an old life headed to the archives. Many moments are played for laughs, but they also feel real.For Pollack and Regina it was one more Beck concert. “We both wanted to believe we were directing Elijah’s musical taste, even before Day One,” he writes. He can’t resist, even though he seems aware such hopes are only a beat removed from ironic onesies.

After baby Elijah’s arrival, Pollack writes while downing a patty melt. It’s a passage full of sweet, ignorant optimism.

It permeates the rest of the After portion of the book as Pollack navigates some dead-horse areas for humor. (To Snip or Not to Snip is a chapter title . . . and he does manage to pack in some new laughs.)

Time and again he revisits the theme of trying to reconcile some sliver of the selfishness of his prior existence as a hip arty guy with the practical doings that define his new role. In seeking a “parenting philosophy” the couple decide “we would be cool parents. . . . We weren’t going to be people whose interest in popular music, or not-so-popular music, died the day our first kid was born.”

Amid the overbearing teasing throughout his book, Pollack’s closing passage subtly summarizes his true feelings on how he’ll manage his child’s doings. It’s a moving payoff and best read where it’s placed, at the book’s end.

It’s heartening to find a different Pollack — whose great, previous work was well-armored with its opinionated cynicism — who has put a vulnerable side on full display here. Even the titular term is more cute than cool: Alternadad.