Tom Daley has revealed that becoming a father “changed his perspective” after welcoming baby Robbie with husband Dustin Lance Black last year.
The pair, who married in 2017, used a surrogate to have little Robbie who was born last June, with Daley hailing fatherhood as “incredible”.
The Olympic diver, who competed in Plymouth other the weekend, gushed over his “cheeky” son as he opened up about how him and Black’s latest chapter had shifted his world view.
Daley, 24, told BBC Sport: "It's incredible, it changes your perspective on everything and it's nice that diving isn't my whole world anymore.
“He is like a cheeky little monkey to be honest, but he's the most adorable, sweetest and caring little kid who's growing up so quickly.”
The athlete also explained why the couple chose to keep their son’s face off of social media, wanting to “do everything they can to protect him”.
“When he was born there were so many of our family members that hadn't met him in person so we wanted to keep it for them and for us,” he told the website.
“It's nice not to have him blasted all over social media. Right now we just want to keep him to ourselves as he's our son and we want to do everything we can to protect him.”
Daley added that things would likely change next year when Robbie travels to Tokyo 2020 with his parents to watch Daley compete as “there won’t be anything stopping people taking photos”.
However, the tot does feature on their social media channels, with Daley recently sharing a sweet snap of Black holding their boy as they watched him dive.
Daley captioned the Instagram: “Robbie came to watch Papa dive!...and WE WON!”
Away from sport, Daley will explore same-sex surrogacy in a new BBC documentary, travelling to California where surrogacy is legal as well as countries where it is not.
The aim of the hour-long documentary is to question whether the American or the British system works best and ponder changes to either system.
