Princess Kate Has a \201cRadical New Way\201d of Raising Her Three Kids

The Wales family roasting marshmallows with Scouts

(Image credit: Getty)

published 2 July 2023

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.

Prince William, Kate Middleton, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis on their first day of school at Lambrook

“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 Wales family of five at the Easter service this year

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.”

The Wales family of five on the Buckingham Palace balcony for Trooping the Colour

Kate’s “own middle-class upbringing” is “the blueprint” for her wishes, Sykes said.

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Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.

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