In a new study released by Princess Kate Middleton’s Royal Foundation Center for Early Childhood on February 2, researchers addressed a “growing concern” about technoference. When parents are distracted by their smartphones, for example, it could be negatively affecting “critical” social interactions with their kids. “We thrive when we are connected to one another,” Kate wrote in the study’s foreword. “This means taking a profound look at ourselves and our own behaviors, emotions and feelings.”
Encouraging self-reflection is a hallmark of the Princess of Wales’ approach to life. Unlike many older royals, Kate, 43, embraces openness and introspection, which extends to how she’s raising her children — Prince William, 42. “Kate’s leading the way in parenting a new generation of royals,” an insider exclusively tells Life & Style. She, along with other relatives taking a similarly modern approach — including Princess Eugenie, 34, and Princess Beatrice, 36, Zara Tindall, 43, and Meghan Markle, 43, “are all raising their children to be empathetic, open to taking advice and criticism, and realistic about their privilege.”
LEADING (MORE) NORMAL LIVES
Whether they were born with blue blood or married into it, these moms all agree on one thing: “They don’t want out-of-touch kids taking advantage of their birthright,” explains the insider. “They all have a hands-on approach, which is a far cry from the tradition in which most royal children were raised.” King Charles III, 76, for one, had a famously formal relationship with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. In her 2017 book Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, author Sally Bedell Smith wrote that the monarch’s parents, “only saw their children after breakfast and tea time.” Kate, on the other hand, is notorious for doing school runs and attending her kids’ games and practices. “We’re no different to other parents,” retired rugby star Mike Tindall, 46 — who shares kids Mia, 11, Lena, 6, and Lucas, 3, with William’s cousin Zara — told HELLO! Like Kate and William, “our weekends end up being about the kids and getting them to their sports.” Mike’s also said he’s no fan of far-off boarding schools even though his wife and her mother, Princess Anne, 74, both attended them. “I don’t really want [the kids] to be distanced from us,” he told the Daily Mail, adding that it “goes against my instincts.”
In-law Kate’s instincts are to reenforce the values her middle-class parents instilled in her growing up in rural Bucklebury, England. “It’s the simple things that really make a difference,” she told the “Happy Mum, Happy Baby” podcast. “It’s spending quality time with your children … watching a fire on a really rainy day … going for a walk together.”
PARENTING PLAYBOOK
Meghan and husband Prince Harry, 40, are raising their kids, Prince Archie, 5, and Princess Lilibet, 3, to be welcoming and polite. The couple practiced what they preach when they invited friends displaced by January’s L.A. wildfires to stay at their home in Montecito, California. In November 2024, Meghan told Marie Claire that during holidays, they “always make sure there’s room at the table” for pals who don’t have family. Meanwhile, when Archie was still a toddler, he learned their four-word mantra: “We always tell him, ‘Manners make the man,’” Megahan revealed to The Cut in 2022.
More parenting advice to live by? Beatrice’s husband, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, 41 — dad to Sienna, 3, and Athena, nearly 1 month, with Bea and son Wolfie, 8, with architect ex Dara Huang — told the Financial Times one of the best books he’s read in recent years in Esther Wojcicki’s How to Raise Successful People. Explained Edo: “There is nothing more important than raising and educating our kids and doing it well and she achieved this using the word TRICK,” which stands for trust, respect, independence, collaboration and kindness. Bea also swaps parenting advice with her sister “all the time,” according to Eugenie — mom to sons August, 4, and Ernest, 20 months, with Jack Brooksbank, 38 — who told HELLO!, “I ring her a lot about meltdowns.”
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Princess Diana was among the first modern royals to forge a new parenting path before her untimely death at 36 in 1997. “I remember [her] telling me that she wanted her two boys to be brought up in a way no other royal princes had been,” former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond wrote in The i Paper in December 2024. “And she did her best to give them an idea of what life beyond the palace walls is like.”
William and Kate, she added, “have gone further.” While they can’t change “that their children have been born into an extraordinary destiny,” Bond explained, “they’ve also given them a taste of a more ordinary existence.”