Philippine Daily Inquirer

Internet famous dads

- By Raquel P. Gomez

They’re funny and cool dads who shot to fame over at the Internet. These new breed of dads got our collective attention because of some cause they spoused or the world just found them amusing and worth the likes and million shares.

Father of daughters dad

Simon Hooper, 34-year-old management consultant from South London, is among the growing band of “Instadads,” who use social media to post real-life and funny snaps of their brood.

Hooper’s Instagram account with the handle “fa- ther_of_daughters” has 668k followers. Through Instagram photos and accompanyi­ng captions, Hooper shows what parenting really looks like.

Hooper is father of four daughters and describes himself through the posts as “a handy man, taxi driver, swimming instructor, tutor, chef, counselor, human climbing frame, bank, personal shopper and PA.” “My whole account is to show a realistic view of what parenting is like from a parent’s perspectiv­e. There is way too much sugarcoati­ng when it comes to parents, so I wanted to share what it’s really like and provide a bit of humor at the same time,” he told HuffPost.

According to a Telegraph story, Hooper believes the role of dads is changing, with men becoming more involved directly in raising kids. Like women, men are also torn between career and family life.

Hooper believes the best way to handle stress of parenting particular­ly of dads like him is to encourage openness. His sharing of the challenges of raising four children through the Instagram posts will provide hope to others that they are not alone in their parenting struggles.

The BBC dad

Known as the “BBC dad,” Robert Kelly, an American associate professor at Pusan National University in South Korea, shot to Internet fame when a BBC live interview of him being unceremoni­ously interrupte­d by his children went viral.

Kelly had been speaking to the BBC via Skype when his four-year-old daughter happily marched into his home office. His ninemonth-old son in a baby walker came by also, followed by his wife, who chased after the children and expertly took them out of the room. All throughout, Kelly tried to maintain his on-camera composure.

“We are just a regular family and raising two young children can be a lot of work,” Kelly said during a news conference at the university.

“We love our children very much, and we are happy that our family blooper — our family error on television — brought so much laughter to so many people.”

Kelly told BBC in a follow-up interview, he could see his children walking through the door behind him from a mirror image on his monitor. “I was hoping that maybe my daughter might sit down and read a book or something, even for 30 seconds until we could just cut the interview, but once my son came in on the little roller, then it was sort of… then there was nothing I could do,” Kelly told the BBC.

The video was widely shared on social media, with the majority of comments expressing amusement over the incident. One version of the video on a BBC Facebook page had over 86 million views as of Wednesday.

Cool dad who got son a Little Mermaid doll

His four-year-old child Azai decided he wanted a Princess Ariel doll. So Mikki Willis, from Ojai, California, got The Little Mermaid doll as an exchange for a duplicate birthday present in a toy store.

But when Willis saw an older woman gave him and his son a disapprovi­ng glance, he was inspired to make a video defending Azai’s choice of toy.

Willis heart-warming clip has been viewed nearly 30 million times since it was posted on Facebook and YouTube and he is continuing to spread the word that dolls are for everybody regardless of gender.

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 ??  ?? RobertKell­y andfamily
RobertKell­y andfamily
 ??  ?? Simon Hooper and daughters
Simon Hooper and daughters
 ??  ?? Dad mikki Willis and son Azai
Dad mikki Willis and son Azai

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