Kate and Pippa Middleton

[hellosally]

I'm reading about Pippa's new £15 million home and another pregnancy. I am sure both sisters are lovely people but looking at their lives, it seems like neither ever had any intention of working and used school and university to get themselves mixing in affluent circles to bag a wealthy man to fund their lifestyles.
Do people like this still really exist? I know we all have choices but at times in my life when I have mixed in more affluent circles in university and London, men would spot gold diggers and women who would need to be financially supported a mile off and would not contemplate taking them seriously. I dont know any women who havent have some kind of career or any men that want someone who hasnt worked.
is there anyone bringing up their daughters(or sons) like this in this day and age? would you bankroll them if it all went wrong? just curious.

Agree entirely. Really unfair. Also why reserve your criticism for the women in the family - bit sexist. James Middleton has not got a successful work history either.

Also- wealthy people marry other wealthy people shock. The Middleton family are seriously wealthy in their own right.

Lastly they all seem fairly grounded and pleasant family people actually. I think Kate works hard and has mastered her early years issue very well - better than many cabinet ministers master their briefs for sure.

Of all the wasters in this world why pick on them? Why have a go at them at all.

I do think like social groups gravitate towards each other in lots of ways. To mix in the Circles the Middleton girls did you have to be able to take time off to keep up with all the holidays and to go to night clubs during the week. If you had head down working 50 hours a week you would just get quickly left behind.

the marlborough fees are currently £13,000 per term!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! wtaf!!!!!!!!!!!!! that's a year's salary for me!

mick middleton's wallet is literally too small for his fifties and his diamond shoes are too tight.

I have friends who married wealthy men and they are now able to stay at home with their children without working. Surely it’s the same concept? Albeit on a slightly smaller scale.

If my husband was wealthy and I was able to stop working I would - Similarly if I was wealthy and my husband was able to stay at home with my kids I would also be delighted (and a bit jealous!)

Pippa has just finished a Masters, so presumably hasn't been just sat yelling at the Nanny and buying thing with her husbands money

I wouldn’t raise my daughters to be SAHMs. How depressing.

She was! I remember the at the time the fuss that was made that a commoner married in to the RF. The people on here are getting confused between a commoner and being common, they're totally different.

“as Jane's marrying so greatly must throw them in the way of other rich men;”

Mrs Bennet, Pride & P

Basically, Kate bagged herself a Prince, throwing Pippa into the path of other rich/powerful men who’d love to have a king as an in-law.

I went to Edinburgh University at a similar time to Pippa, and the degree I studied - English literature - had a distinct clique of these upper middle class and upper class students fresh from boarding school and an expensive gap year.

They really did have their own little world separate from other students. Their own area of town to live in, preferred clubs, dress style etc. Weekends spent in someone’s grand hunting lodge in the Highlands.

It was very clear that while they were generally pleasant to other students they just didn’t see the likes of lower middle class me (or anyone Scottish!) as potential friends, or as potential partners. It just wouldn’t have factored into their thought process. And so as time goes on the vast majority of Pippa types I knew have married someone very wealthy, who usually works in finance, and/or who has huge amounts of inherited wealth.

As for the women and careers - you really can’t generalise. A few have traditional careers, a lot are working in the arts or creative sector (I.e. in jobs that required years of unpaid internships and a flat in London paid for by mummy and daddy after graduation).

Like in many other social circles there are some women who have been more focused on family and children rather than pursuing a career as such. From the subset of women in this Edinburgh uni group I’m still aware of, entering their forties many have a (very) part-time yoga teacher role, or Instagram friendly interior design type businesses, that scream ‘bankrolled by husband’.

Do people like this still really exist?

Well clearly they do @hellosally because you are writing about them!

There are lots of women from all social classes whose sole aim is to get married, or find a partner, and not put a lot of effort into their education or a career. No offence, but there are many women working in low-paid jobs, who have no career prospects and who simply want a man to enable them to have a house and a family.

In the 'old days' these women 'came out' as debutantes, went to finishing school, or took fairly low-key jobs like being a nanny, but their intention was to mix with the right pool of eligible men.

One of my ex-s had a sister who was one of the last lot of 'debs'. Both he and she went to top public schools and she was unusual in carving out a very successful career for herself. It wasn't the way at the time.

There are still some women like that today.

Pippa has a degree in English although her writing career has never taken off - her Waitrose columns were dire, and she only got that through who she was. I think she was fairly desperate to marry by her early 30s, after a few failed relationships, and I am still a bit surprised at her choice.

An enormous fuss was made about Diana being a commoner!

A commoner as in not a member of a royal family. Missing the point that she was an Earl's daughter.

We had the same thing about Kate being an ordinary middle class girl, as if she'd been to an average private day school on an assisted place. Her dad's inherited wealth was never mentioned.

I know they have both lived privileged lives, but I think they're nice, kind women. I'd be incredibly proud of either of them if they were my daughters. Why do we need to pull people (women) down?!

Coupla things:

What Kate M does is what I think of as a pretend job. I've met some wealthy people over time who had 'jobs' that were handed to them by a colleague of their dad's and that they would leave if they clashed once with a co-worker.

Their purpose was not to earn a living, but to enable them to give an account of themselves beyond 'I'm an heir/ess'. Johnson's overpaid newspaper columns and Sam Cam's 'clothing business' are examples of such non-jobs.

Also, yes, there are some people (the ones I've met were women, but men could do it too) who have a knack for social climbing not through professional but through social roles.

I knew a girl once, child of hippieish parents, who had put herself forward for a fancy school and then cycled through internships in the art world (cooler then, around 2000, than now, I guess).

She dated an up and coming curator but also a heavy-drinking struggling artist type (slumming it for well-roundedness, I guess?) Last I heard she was married to the heir to one of the UK's big supermarket fortunes. Some cloth as the Middleton sisters, methinks. It's a talent of sorts.

Her dad's inherited wealth was never mentioned.

How do you know about her dad's wealth? @AnnaMagnani

I thought the money for their education came from the party business her mother set up?

It is not that unusual for 2 siblings to go to a public school. I know the cost (I used to work in one!)

Many fairly 'ordinary' parents scrimp and scrape to pay fees, often by one parent's income going solely on the fees and making do with old cars and few holidays. Lots of sacrifices made along the way. And there are also bursaries and reduction for 2 kids at the same school.

They just mov and live in those circles. Certain schools, Universities, contacts and families and friends who can open doors. Of course some become lawyers or doctors but there are areas that take people who are connected. Auction and art dealers, advertising, publishing etc. They marry Guards officers, barristers, hedge fund managers because those are the circles they mix in. Money marries money. It doesn't trade down.

@hellosally Many men want a woman who will be a SAHM.
I know quite a few men who married 'beneath them' in terms of education and career. They are happy to have someone run the home and they will be the breadwinner. Obviously the men earn enough money to do this, but not all men are looking for a wife with a career.

I disagree that Kate doesn’t work. I would rather do 37 hours per week in my current role than have her job tbh. She spends a lot of time out of the family home and her diary will be very much planned for her.

ok, so she might not be grafting in a manual job, but I’m sure she is just as tired as the rest of us when her working week comes to an end.

She isn’t a lady of leisure that’s for sure.

I don't mean to over-generalise but I suspect there are still many men who do want a trophy wife. If that's what they want and they can find a woman who is happy with the arrangement, then that's their choice. It would drive a lot of women up the wall of course but there we go.

There's probably a bit of a stigma that the women must feel in this day and age so it's probably not very satisfying, ( she says, to cheer herself up).

I have a lovely friend who is genuinely a lovely kind wonderful person who married at 22 for money there’s no getting away from it he was an evil bastard she had two children with him he conveniently died of cancer mid divorce so she got everything that she asked for the £450,000 house and half of the life insurance to raise the children on with half being divided by the two of them and put away.
she was then on one of these dating apps literally two minutes before she met the next one she put down the substantial deposit on their new home and he paid the mortgage and all the bills until his mother died and cleared the mortgage. She had another child with him they are mortgage free at 32. She doesn’t work.

Not daft that one.

@SunniestSunshine

Her dad was an airline pilot - true. He married Carole, an air stewardess who set up Party Pieces which made a lot of money - true.

However Michael comes from a wealthy family with links to the aristocracy, it's own trust funds, he went to public school himself and the trust funds paid for the children's school fees.

It's arguable how well Party Pieces would have done without the royal connections. And them buying the massive house coincided with an inheritance, not the business booming. So Carole's business genius may have been oversold to us.

All this information has been in the public domain for years.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Middleton_(British_businessman)

Just had a nose at Pippa's husband,he really looks like a toff

You would know by looking at him he's very rich.
He just exudes it.

Marrying for a house worth £450k isn’t really in the same league though is it 😆

But they knew exactly what to do to get their kids "in" with the elite... I wouldn't have a clue where to start

I don’t know about you but wish I done it 🤣

Her dad was an airline pilot

He worked in Operations.