Breakaway Kate… Will a second Duchess forge her own path?
When it comes to bringing up the Cambridge children, is the very modern Duchess about to insist on doing things her way?
We’ve seen quite a lot of the Duchess of Cambridge during lockdown. Most recently she popped up in the sunny grounds of Sandringham House in Norfolk, giving an interview to BBC Breakfast. It was to support ‘ Tiny Happy People’ – a charitable collaboration between her Royal Foundation and the BBC, providing support to new parents.
And once again Kate, 38, who was sporting new honeycoloured highlights in her chestnut locks, was talking about a cause close to her heart – childcare, particularly in the early years. The mumof-three is clearly passionate about parenting, and, with Wills having shown he shares her hands-on approach, it raises the distinct possibility that when it comes to their brood, she and William will be prepared to break with tradition and do things their own way.
And one decision that must be weighing on her mind at the moment is whether to follow Royal tradition and send their eldest son, Prince George, away to boarding school, or to keep him at his day school.
If she followed the custom, he would go away, aged eight – which is just over a year away now, as the young prince has just celebrated his seventh birthday (see page 50).
Both Prince William and
Prince Harry were full-time boarders at Ludgrove School in Berkshire from the age of eight. For Kate – a modern, deeply involved mum, who herself comes from a very close family – that must seem pretty young to be sending her beloved first-born away from home, especially as she will no doubt remember that her own experience of boarding school at Downe House as a teenager was not an entirely happy one.
Currently, the Cambridge family are based at Anmer Hall in Norfolk, where the children have been homeschooled during lockdown by Kate and William. In fact, they even kept the routine going during the Easter holidays!
‘Don’t tell the children but we’ve actually kept it going, I feel very mean,’ joked the Duchess in one touching Zoom interview.
Pre-lockdown, both George and his sister Charlotte were day pupils at Thomas’s School in Battersea, south London, with Kate and Wills regular faces on the school run. Is it possible that the Cambridges might leave George at the school where he seems happy?
‘ We are used to seeing members of Royalty breaking tradition these days, so it won’t come as much of a shock if they do things their way,’ said Royal watcher Ingrid Seward. ‘Kate and
William are modern parents and will weigh up the decision very carefully.
‘I think they’ll wait to see how the children’s personalities develop, and take into consideration whether or not they would be happy to live away from home,’ she added. ‘Having experienced terrible trauma in his own childhood, William is very tuned in to his children’s mental health.’
Certainly, the lot of Royal children at boarding school has not always been a happy one. Prince Charles was famously miserable at the tough Scottish boarding school, Gordonstoun, which he is said to have dubbed ‘Colditz in Kilts’.
He went there allegedly at the insistence of Prince Philip, who had loved his own time there, while the Queen was said to favour the rather softer regime of Eton. And before that, he was at Cheam in Hampshire, which Her Majesty was said to know was a ‘misery’ for her sensitive eldest son. Kate herself is no stranger to unhappiness at school – she spent only two terms as a day girl at posh boarding school Downe House, before swapping to Marlborough, after allegedly being bullied.
Seward added, ‘I think William and Kate’s view will be, if the children are happy in their school, why change things?’
But Kate might be looking forward to the children going back into some kind of education, as lockdown has been tough.
‘It’s been challenging,’ admitted the Duchess. ‘Some parts have been really positive, spending extra time with the kids, everything like that, but it is equally stressful. You are in confined spaces... And having to home-school, that was a challenge. I always had a respect for teachers before, but now I have a newfound respect for them.’
But, of course, coming out of lockdown has its own challenges too as, like the rest of us, the Cambridges have gotten used to lockdown life .
‘How do you extend that umbilical cord from having had that precious time together? I know, from a personal perspective, having all that extra time together as a family, but then being able to step back again and go back to how things were… it’s really hard for lots of families,’ she said.
Indeed. Kate’s very honest words will ring true for families the length and breadth of the country...