Long before Princess Kate is, well, a princess, she’s a mom. She’s been at the motherhood role for basically a decade—unbelievably, her eldest, Prince George, turns 10 this month—and, in addition to George, she and husband Prince William are raising Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis. The Daily Express reports that Kate is adopting a “radical new way” of raising her kids—a “new way of doing things,” the outlet reports. How so?
Royal biographer Tom Quinn said Kate is “sticking to her roots” when it comes to parenting her three; Kate’s own parents, Michael and Carole Middleton, also raised three kids themselves. Kate, Quinn said, is respectfully slightly modifying tradition behind palace walls (or, well, the walls of Adelaide Cottage, where the Wales family of five live). Speaking to The Daily Beast, Quinn said that part of this new way forward includes involving William in parenting in ways that previous heirs had not been.
“I have heard that Kate has been very good at both accepting the way the system works, but also slightly subversively modifying it,” he said. “[Kate] insisted that William was involved in bedtime, reading to the kids and bathing them, and they split the school run.”
Royal commentator Daniela Elser wrote in a piece for news.com.au that this is Kate’s “starting point,” and that William has “already done more parenting than centuries of forbidding, emotionally stunted heirs before him ever have combined.”
Additionally, Elser wrote, the Wales family are “not attended to by a small battalion of staff.” For example, Adelaide Cottage is only four bedrooms—not nearly as large as, say, Buckingham Palace, where King Charles grew up.
The Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes also reported that, according to royal sources, “the children—and William—are expected to do regular chores, such as emptying the dishwasher and tidying around the house.” Sykes added that the family “do not have a full-time housekeeper specifically because Kate wants them to experience as much normality as possible.”
Kate’s “own middle-class upbringing” is “the blueprint” for her wishes, Sykes said.
