Dadlife: Family Tales from Instagram’’s Father of Daughters

From uninitiated parents-to-be to those who know the ropes in families large or small, everyone will find something to relate to in Simon’s chaotic tales of his own home life. Before now dads are often the forgotten ones who carry the luggage, open stiff jars, take photos on holiday, fix broken bikes, go back to work, do the night feeds and make a mean beans on toast with melted cheese without so much as a pat on the back. All too often dads shrink into the background. But not in this book. Dadlife is a funny yet emotionally heartfelt ode to modern family life.

Simon Hooper (Author)
For 40% of the day, Simon works as a management consultant. For 100% of the day, Simon is a father to his 4 daughters. 40% and 100% don’t quite add up, because being a parent isn’t something you can turn off. Even when you’re at work there are emails about gymnastic classes, paying lunch fees, providing instructions on how to work the overly complicated smart TV and other various parent life admin.

Now, Simon has committed another 40% of the day to social media and engaging with his hundreds of thousands of followers about real life parenting challenges. He still works 40% of the day as a management consultant too. He also spends 20% of the time clearing up and doing DIY jobs, while being a dad 100% of the time - yes, that’s 200% of the time he’s doing something which goes some way to explain why he hasn’t slept for 10 years and has a forehead covered in so many lines, you could mistake it for a ploughed field.

With the small sliver of remaining time Simon does find, he likes to spend time on ’secret projects’ in the shed (no one is yet to actually see any results from these projects) and cycles - basically things that give him time on his own, a brief reprieve from a life surrounded and outnumbered by girls.