Catherine's childhood shaped the woman she now is

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Following on from the Catherine's looks thread below I think it is fair to say her childhood upbringing has had so much to do with who she now is.
Her parents took great pride in the familys appearance, manners, education & extracurriculars.
The Middleton kids excelled at swimming, athletics, lacrosse, hockey, netball, skiing, triathlon (James & Pippa), rowing, tennis on top of amateur dramatics, piano & girl scouts.
That type of investment carrys on into adulthood.
And I do feel the Middleton's were fantastic parents in the kids younger days, very clued in & knew exactly what type of children they wanted to raise.

Yes everyone’s childhood shapes them and Catherine sees like a very nice woman who came from a nice family but she is human so neither she nor them are perfect. Just a nice person doing her best.

That's pretty standard right.. Everyone's childhood shapes the way they are, it's the very foundation of modern psychology

Whats also true is that all humans are flawed in their own ways, so Catherine can come from a lovely family but also have her own insecurities, anger issues, pettiness, idiocy, whatever like the rest of us. Noone is perfect.

@Waynesplanet I absolutely agree. My point is following on from the Catherine's looks thread where the op wished to emulate Catherine is that Catherine's standards grooming, deportment, healthy eating & excercise have been set from the minute she was born.

The thing I find genuinely odd is that the Middletons do not seem to have viewed as important career accomplishments.

My parents invested a lot both in terms of money and time/energy in my education and, though they would have been supportive if that's what I wanted, they would not view it as a success if I hadn't used my education to build a career for myself. They absolutely wouldn't have supported me to just live in Chelsea and husband hunt.

Kate and Pippa seem like something from a Jane Austen novel!

@spriots James was an entrepreneur think he's doing something with cocker spaniels now.. The three kids had very expensive educations with every advantage given to them, I'm surprised too. Maybe they expected the kids to work in the family business?

I can confirm this is true; I was at university with Pippa, same year and same course. One year we were in the same weekly tutorial group. It was on a Friday morning and she often missed the class to go away for the weekend with the rest of the ‘Castle Crew.’ Priorities!

She didn’t get good enough grades in French to go abroad for the third year, like everyone else who was studying a language did.

When invited to dinner parties(!), she’d bring a pudding she’d made herself - always trying to prove to the men that she was wife material.

I imagine Kate was the same!

I was instilled with work ethics and to do well in education and stand on my own two feet without relying on anyone. My parents never trained me to bag a rich husband but instead invested in my education and independence. As lovely as they may sound and have had a privileged upbringing with all the extracurricular stuff but really it was mainly focused on so that they could circle around the upper class hoping that they could rub shoulders with them. As a woman who is currently pregnant to a girl this is something I wouldn't want for my daughter.

Oooh! Was she nice? The Castle Crew sound fun! That's interesting re the French, it was said Pippa got better grades than Catherine..

I don’t get threads like this! I am not a royalist yet people are so quick to jump to certain conclusions about the motivations of the Middleton parents.

For a start everyone is certain beyond doubt that Carole (not her husband of course) engineered Kate’s relationship with Wills and they didn’t send their dc to uni to meet people, get qualified and have a good time like most other posh parents, but to specifically “marry” well.

Very few comfortably off middle class people of my acquaintance want their offspring to marry straight out of university nowadays!

Similarly, Pippa couldn’t turn up at a dinner party with a home made pud because it was a nice friendly thing to do, no, she was showing off and trying to entice a rich husband!

It’s so blatantly sexist! And the narrative about Carole being a social climber is snobby too and is so contradictory when compared with all of the comments about Wills being lucky to have the support of such a close family of in laws!

And none of us know what Carole thinks about Pippa not working, but as someone who set up and ran a once highly successful business, why assume that she wanted her dds to be sahps?

I can only assume that people are jealous of the Middleton to constantly churn out this rubbish.

When invited to dinner parties(!), she’d bring a pudding she’d made herself - always trying to prove to the men that she was wife material.

What a comment! Honestly - women are rounded multifaceted people whose whole existence is not predicated on the existence of men. I would have thought a pudding an original host gift to bring to a dinner party (much as I love wine and flowers) - silly me.

Most people are just struggling to get by. I don’t recognise the Middletons’ lifestyles - expensive schools, access to multi sports activities (and the cost all that would entail).

Most people don’t live like that.

What kind of woman is she today?

Bland, sticks to the script, never puts a foot wrong, is pretty and wears nice clothes.

Hardly something to aspire to.

I can confirm you can do all that & your kids might not grow as you’d suspect. One might do a temporary bunk, not conform, rebel. Etc. Such a bad thing in the end? What we really, really want for our children, any stall we set up. Is it not normal for some push back? A challenge? Ability at games, can it be coached?

I spent all my years at school avoiding games/sports, mud & the freezing cold & what I saw as unsanitary conditions. A rogue group formed by radiators in store cupboards where the prefects couldn’t find us.

in my own experience those that do conform, if that’s really what we’re talking about here, do so through fear and that can ultimately stunt & stifle.

The happiest I’ve met in UMC circles are the creative types who have had considerable success as writers, artists etc. I can’t imagine CM doing much with wild, creative spirits?*

*CM please write a ‘how to’ book/guide, asking for a friend :).

Thinking of Carol, 70s/80s ex air hostesses are amongst the most formidable, driven & successful women I’ve ever met. Their children generally success stories & their marriages long, happy & stable. Many have ‘gone up in the world’ unimaginably & are/were very ambitious. I met many through work & socially. I think the selection process was brutal & they sifted for IQ, mettle & character, many got turned down for BA etc.

What struck me is that they took her out of a school where she wasn't happy. Ie, they validated her feelings. They didn't minimise her unhappiness or dismiss her concerns. That is the kind of valuation as a child that leads to not seeking validation excessively as an adult.

She knows she had a good early start.
I'm also interested in the effects of parenting but for different reasons.

@ChanelNo19EDT that’s a good point & suggests a close relationship. She told her parents how she felt. Dangers come when, boarding children especially, bottle feelings up or try to excessively please at detriment of own well being. It might be a housemistress spotted her unhappiness or lack of fit & flagged it up too. Speaks very well of school when they do this. I wonder if her brother was happy at school & did this?

I see her differently. I see a woman who was trashed by the media for a decade and she had no visible reaction to that. Amazing. That shows a strong sense of self in my opinion. She had no inclination to shape our perception of her with small messages, performed.

I see somebody who understands the role she has ,and values the opportunity to use it for what matters to her and to other people. That's not blandness, that's insight, and strength, and not pursuing glory for its own sake.

I'm not some British monarchist, nothing wrong with that, I'm not even British, but i see her character as strong not bland.

What would be a strong character in your book? A woman unafraid to give us all of her opinions?!

I think she is "strong" enough not to care, she performs her role and hides her private self. thats smart. She knows that if people think she's boring, she's doing nothing else wrong.

As a reactive person myself, often accused of being emotional and sensitive by my own parents who never validated me and in fact, met my emotions with a punishing cold shoulder I wish I was a bit more like her! When I'm about to react impulsively I should ask myself "what would kate middleton do?" but obviously I merely think of that, later, when it's too late and I've already told everybody what I really think 🤔

@ChanelNo19EDT you’ve made me think
of Prince G. What if he’s unsuited for or unhappy re: future role? A lot to carry you need to be extremely robust & to a large extent that’s genetic or it isn’t…

Yeh, Prince Charles, or sorry King Charles wasn't suited to it, initially, id have thought. Andrew was probably better suited to it, heaven help the public!! But with all of the right support, I think George will be suppored to grow in to a public role very much at his own pace.

Nobody gave a thought to prince Charles' inner self, and he got there in the end. He has made it his own role which reflects his personality.

I'd say allowing a shy or even, just introverted person to grow in to the role slowly, initially rejecting the parts that aren't a good fit, that will give George the confidence to get used to being in the public, taking on one more public role at a time. Introverts can be confident.

Unlike Charles, he has a mother who validates his feelings. Unlike William he has a mother who isn't leaning on him.

Reckon george will be ok.
I worry more about my own son!!

@ChanelNo19EDT I am not sure PC could have done it without Camilla, the right support so important.

Yes, I agree.

I think Catherine has discipline and self-control. Those are actually admirable qualities - just undervalued in today's society.

Unfortunately, I think she applies that self-control a little bit too much when it comes to staying so thin. She's always been slim but she only became really thin when she married William.

Well to be fair most people didn't raise the future queen so they can't relate to the Middletons! I can't relate either!

I know a couple too, all very well groomed & elegant. Big houses, happy marriages, private schools for kids & very ambitious.

Very good point & they only left her a term before pulling her from Downe house & putting her in Malborough. They put her well being & mental health first

I'd suggest that when she is on royal engagements she is behaving as anyone in a public facing role, being professional, making your engagement about members of the public/organisations rather than about yourself, following protocol etc, therefore acting in a professional manner. Which could account for the "bland" statements. Its clearly not an easy role even those such as princess Diana, Sarah Ferguson who would have far more insight at the outset than Kate struggled ( appreciate there was far more going on) so in that sense she has clearly earned her stripes.

The stint in Jordan will have helped too - culturally and in terms of resilience / adventure - the 3 of them do all seem to have a good crack at doing stuff - Pippa used to do some interesting marathon / extreme sports stuff, Kate is always game for joining in the abseiling / sport / whatever when she’s on trips and the brother has done some expedition stuff too.
the Operation Raleigh and year in Florence at the British institute is really modern finishing school stuff of dreams. The family were seriously loaded to do all that and buy them a big flat in Chelsea to live in - they seem to have had a LOT more cash than a trust fund for school fees and family business would suggest- my guess is that Pa Middleton may have done very well out of BA shares when it floated.