Catherine, pregnant Duchess of Cambridge, names a Princess Cruises ship 'Royal Princess' at Ocean Terminal, Southampton Docks, Hampshire, Britain, June 13, 2013.
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That genteel debate is now a war ground, the devotees of attachment parenting ranged against advocates of strict routines and letting a baby cry itself to sleep. Like any first-time parents in contemporary Britain, William and Kate will have to choose between these new orthodoxies (or muddle through--the less doctrinal and still popular third option for new parents). Kate's benign experience of family bonds--growing up in a conspicuously harmonious household--is likely to feed into any decisionmaking.
Yet the leap from observing that the Middletons are a close family to assuming that the royal baby will be brought up outside the royal tradition, without a nanny, perhaps spared the separation of boarding school, is just that--a leap. Kate will be a working mother; her demonstrated sense of duty as a royal is likely to mean a return to time-consuming appearances at official events well before her child is of school age. And at that stage, boarding school is unlikely to be out of the question. In interviews, William and Harry often equate happiness with one concept: normality. Being sent away, first at age 8 to Ludgrove school, then to Eton College gave both Princes a tantalizing taste of being like other children. There tends to be much less bullying at British private schools nowadays than there was when Charles was at Gordonstoun. Kate herself boarded, from age 13, at the elite Marlborough College. Moreover, for a child who will be more watched than the newest Kardashian, boarding school could offer useful protection against prying press.
Psychological research has laid bare the damage that growing up in the spotlight can do, and that spotlight continues to intensify in a world of rolling news and unfurling social media. Britain's phone-hacking scandal was uncovered after Rupert Murdoch's Sunday tabloid News of the World tapped into the voice mails of William and Harry. As William and Kate's celebrity has burgeoned, so has one of the most serious challenges to their parenting.
Being scrutinized when you're growing up is no fun. "You want to be able to mess around and play and break rules so that you can set your own identity," says Linda Blair, a U.S.-born, U.K.-based clinical psychologist and author of The Happy Child: Everything You Need to Know to Raise Confident, Enthusiastic Children. Newspaper revelations of Harry's experimentation, at 16, with cannabis, his misguided choice of fancy dress costume four years later (he wore a Nazi swastika armband to a party) or his lack of any costume at all in a Las Vegas hotel room last year illustrate some of the risks for royals of messing around.
But there is a more corrosive effect of being in the public eye. You end up "reacting, not enacting," says Blair, and becoming addicted to attention. Good parenting is perhaps the best way to inoculate against the distorting effects of fame, and Blair is optimistic that William and Kate have the right instincts. "It seems like they're looking for balance and they appreciate complexity, and that makes me feel hopeful."