Esther Rantzen: Three’s A Crowd!

Yes, they’re a joy. But as one mum-of-three warns...

THERE I was, thinking the Cambridges had planned it perfectly. They’d created the ideal royal family: two sweet toddlers Prince George and Princess Charlotte, a boy and a girl, as pretty as two little bookends.

They had an heir and a spare for the country, third and fourth in succession for the throne (because in these days of equality, of course, both princes and princesses have an equal right to succeed). Well done. They could have stopped there.

It’s so practical these days only to have two children, and a good example for a world which worries about overpopulation. Happily, we don’t have to over-reproduce as the royals did in the days when child mortality was rife. Tragic Queen Anne had 18 pregnancies, but none of her babies survived. Thank heavens obstetrics and paediatrics have moved on so that George and Charlotte are clearly fit, healthy, clear-eyed and smiling.

And two is such a convenient number. They fit easily in the car. They’d have a parental hand each. They’d be each other’s best friends just as Great-Granny Lilibet and her sister Margaret Rose were. So I assumed Kate would put the royal christening robe back in the vaults, William would make an appointment at the vasectomy clinic and that they would leave any more royal babies to Uncle Harry when he gets around to it.

How wrong I was. Yesterday the cheery royal announcement broke through the gloom of news bulletins dominated by floods and North Korea and told us that another baby is on the way, presumably due around March or April, and according to the official statement ‘the Queen and members of both families are delighted with the news’.

I don’t want to rain on their parade of course, but I do want to applaud Kate’s courage. Her pregnancies are not fun. She will have the best care, obviously, but I wonder if she and William have thought through how different life will be once the baby is born, with three children to juggle?

WHEN I had my third child, Joshua, back in 1982, I remember the former British ambassador to Washington, Peter Jay, saying: ‘Having two is much the same as one, you’ve already got the cot, the car seat and the nappies. But having a third is a quantum leap. It changes everything.’

He was right. From the start it’s a struggle. Kate and William have two active toddlers, George is four and Charlotte is two, and both will be eager to explore the world.

With two it was comparatively easy to split your concentration between them. Now somebody has to keep an eye on the new baby — and how do you split yourself three ways? You need a nanny. And yes, of course, the Cambridges will have the best professional support. But nobody replaces Mum and Dad, so Nanny won’t do as a substitute. You’ve got to make sure that everyone gets their turn with you.

Otherwise you will find, as I did, that the little girl who was the cherished baby becomes displaced by a new infant, or so she thinks. She then develops ‘middle child syndrome’. That’s certainly what happened to my middle child, Rebecca Wilcox.

I love Rebecca dearly and always have. So I remember my shock when she’d gone away for a school trip and my husband Desmond and I went to King’s Cross station to meet her.

She came towards me with friends, and flinched with embarrassment. On the way home she admitted she had told her friends I wouldn’t come to pick her up because she wasn’t nearly as precious to us as her older sister and her younger brother. I was speechless with indignation.

I deny it, but Rebecca to this day stands by her assertion that as a middle child she missed out. Em, the eldest, was the pioneer, the one who went to school first and to treats like the pantomime; she had new clothes, while Rebecca had her hand-me-downs.

Josh, the youngest, was not just the adored baby of the family, but also the boy. So Rebecca reminds me that he had new clothes too, he was the best man at the family weddings, and he inherited Desmond’s car.

Rebecca claims her two siblings have elaborate baby books, in which I lovingly recorded their weights, their first words, and posted in their locks of baby hair. She says that if she has a baby book, I don’t know where it is. Stung by the accusation, I looked for it. I know it is here somewhere. But she’s right, perhaps it doesn’t contain quite as many details.

But I deny that middle children are always at a disadvantage. The American author Katrin Schumann has written a book, The Secret Power Of Middle Children, which undermines all preconceptions about middle children.

Middle children, so the thinking goes, are far more likely to become outsiders who enjoy nothing like the success or happiness of their brothers and sisters. This analysis seemed to be reinforced by research which suggested eldest children are, on average, more prosperous than their siblings.

Schumann points out that middle children battle for stardom like Madonna and Julia Roberts, they become innovators like Charles Darwin and Bill Gates, or fight for justice like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. And 52 per cent of U.S. presidents are middle children, including Abraham Lincoln and JFK.

HER co- author, Dr Catherine Salmon, is a Californian psychology professor who has researched thousands of middle children. Both said they were amazed at the ill- feeling they encountered — not just in interviews with middle children, but also in dozens of internet forums, where many said they had in some way been ‘abandoned’ by their parents.

But the very opposite is true. They found that, having learned to negotiate for what they want, ‘middles’ tend to have successful friendships and marriages.

The apparent disadvantages they endure in childhood turn out to be beneficial, in many cases giving them empathy, independence, articulacy and creativity.

So Princess Charlotte, as a middle child, will have a glowing future, especially as all three have the great advantage of a great granny and granny with experience. They know that the trick in any family is to make sure that nobody has any favourites.

The Queen, after all, has two middle children. Carole Middleton has three children, and Pippa, tucked like my Rebecca between a sister and a younger brother, hasn’t done badly for herself as one of the world’s most famous society beauties.

And, as I shall remind Rebecca, who is a TV reporter and mother of two terrific sons, as the middle child of three I love equally, she hasn’t done so badly either.