The Duchess of Cambridge created a survey so vague that the data compiled from it is utterly useless. Which leads me to wonder… what the hell was Kate’s staff doing this entire time? Kate allegedly spent YEARS working on the “Five Big Questions” survey, then she launched it in January… and then ignored everything about the survey for most of the year. Now that it’s time to pump up her work numbers for 2020 and end the year on an embiggening high note, suddenly she’s got pie charts and videos of herself posting “insights” from the survey. What makes it even worse (and yet more hilarious) is that Kensington Palace staffers are falling all over themselves to declare this Early Years project to be the greatest thing ever, and crediting Kate with developing “unrivaled insight.” It reminds me of Prince William declaring that his Earthshot Prize is suddenly “the most prestigious” award out there. The exact same energy.
After launching what Kensington Palace called a “milestone” moment in her charitable work, Duchess Kate is ready to reveal the results of her “5 Big Questions” survey after almost one million people responded to her call for action. The findings reveal what the palace is calling “unrivaled insight” which will help shape key areas of focus in the Duchess of Cambridge’s focus on early childhood development and how it shapes the rest of our lives.
On Tuesday, November 24, Kate received details of the results during a virtual briefing at Kensington Palace with Kelly Beaver, an executive at research company Ipsos MORI, which she partnered with for the surveys. In photos shared by her team, a keen duchess can be seen in an ivory blazer studiously taking notes alongside detailed printouts she is keeping in a binder.
The announcement of these insights follow nine years of work by Kate which has included dozens of engagements across the U.K., convening a group of experts, as well as privately studying the effects of difficult childhood experiences in early childhood years and how they are often the root cause for issues such as poor mental health, family breakdown, addiction, and homelessness.
With the results now collected, a Kensington Palace spokesperson tells BAZAAR.com that “next year, The Duchess will announce ambitious plans to help elevate the importance of early childhood.” Her goal being to bring positive change to the lives of children under five across the country and to also reduce the need for late intervention, which in England and Wales alone amounts to around $22.7 billion in government funding.
Kate is expected to give a speech today where she says, in part: “I have seen that experiences such as homelessness, addiction, and poor mental health are often grounded in a difficult childhood. But I have also seen, how positive protective factors in the early years can play a crucial role in shaping our futures.” Again, I find it incredibly problematic and simplistic to say that someone is homeless or mentally ill because they had a bad childhood. Kate will also say this: “The early years are not simply about how we raise our children. They are in fact about how we raise the next generation of adults.” Keen Kate with the absolutely bold position that children grow up to become adults. As for Kate’s plans, next year, to “announce ambitious plans to help elevate the importance of early childhood.” She’s going to keep moving goalposts until she’s in her 70s. In the year 2050, she’ll announce that she’s still very keen about early childhood development and in the coming year, she’ll announce plans to be even more keen.
Bazaar also summarized some of the findings or “insights” from Kate’s Keen Early Years work:
Exactly 98% of survey participants believe that a child’s future is not pre-determined at birth and that nurture is essential to lifelong outcomes. However, only one in four recognized the importance of the first five years of a child’s life.
The reality of life makes it difficult for parents to prioritize their wellbeing (90% of people see parental mental health and wellbeing as critical to a child’s development but only 10% of parents mentioned taking the time to look after their own mental wellbeing when asked how they had prepared for the arrival of a baby). “Worryingly,” the survey results shared by Kensington Palace reveal, “Over a third of all parents (37%) expect the COVID-19 pandemic to have a negative impact on their long-term mental wellbeing.”
Seventy percent of parents feel judged by others and half of those admit that it negatively impacts their mental health.
Parental loneliness has increased during the pandemic from 38% to 63% due to being cut off from friends and family. The increase in loneliness for parents is more apparent in deprived areas.
Across the U.K., 40% of parents feel that community support has grown substantially during the pandemic (although this is 7% lower in the most deprived areas).
You might say “whoa, the survey happened before the pandemic!” This is true, so why is all of this covid data in there? Apparently, Kate’s staff drew from “a ‘nationally representative’ face-to-face survey of over 3,700 people, a survey on the impact of COVID-19, in-depth research on the importance of the early years, and ethnographic research with 12 families.” So Kate couldn’t even get data from her own stupid survey, she had to copy data from another survey and take credit for the findings. As for the findings… what struck me was that “Seventy percent of parents feel judged by others”, but it sounds like Kate is judging and blaming parents for not being rich and healthy and for not having access to her resources.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Backgrid, Kensington Palace.
That first picture will never stop making me laugh!
So it appears that 5 Big Questions were not enough to get these super duper Insights from and they had to draw from other surveys. What a worthwhile use of time it was then.
So they plagiarised other people’s surveys like we thought? Wonders shall never cease. Another empty report of no practical or worldly use. Many children from low income families barely have enough to eat in the UK. Thank God for people like Marcus Rashford who took on the government. If early years are so important why not feed the children? Only children who are alive and well can worry about their mental health. I am upset that so much money, time and energy goes into making this woman look good and it still falls flat because people know that all the words have no tangible impact.
Wait!?!!! Are they seriously not going to cite the in person survey?????????? Whose research is this? Theirs? No right? It’s some actual researcher she’s got nothing to do with. They’re not going to even tell us???
I would love to see her go to an academic conference and present this research as her own. She would be eviscerated. ECE researchers may look like preschool teachers, but they are territorial and don’t welcome newcomers who haven’t paid their dues. The Q&A alone would be worth the conference registration.
“Kate, tell me… what conclusions have you drawn that weren’t the work of other people in prior research?”
“Well, uh, of you look at linguistic development…
“That was the work of Krashen. Next!”
“If you consider the importance of peer to peer development…”
“That was Vygotsky. Next!”
Her face would melt. She might even lose the posh accent. Researchers and academics are brutal as they take you down.
The official Royal Foundation report summary immediately acknowledges that this research was not done by Kate or the Royal Foundation.
Straight from the report: The primary research, analysis and reporting was conducted by Ipsos MORI. The invaluable support and generosity of Kindred2 enabled this research to be conducted. The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge provided valued assistance and advice throughout the research programme.
So, neither the research nor the funding seemed to come from the Royal Foundation, just “valued assistance” and “advice.”
The methodology explains that IPSOS performed 3,700 face to face interviews with people in the UK (not all parents of 0-5 but what they call a representative sample). And unless otherwise stated, all the findings in this report by the Royal Foundation are from these interviews.
Kate’s 5 Big Questions are just highlighted in blue boxes in the report as sidebars and were only meant to spark conversation. IPSO followed up in OCT 2020 with an online corona survey of 1,000 participants to include updated experiences.
END RESULT: Kate and the Royal Foundation hijacked?/commissioned? Ipsos MORI and Kindred2’s work so that Kate had something to attach herself to and raise her profile. It’s very easy to discern in the summary that Kate’s input into the project was minimal and superficial.
Wow so she’s pretending that her bs survey lead to these results and it’s only in the fine print that you see it has nothing to do with anything. That is very deceptive and would get an academic killed. Of course the media will help with this deception.
@Harper Thank you for confirming what I thought this would be. The 5 Questions Survey was so far removed from academia, there was no way they could get actual results from the questions asked. Instead, they took the research that addressed these issues hinted at in the questions.
This is beyond shameful.
So when will the actions from the insights come? We have 5 Big Insights, but I imagine these researchers already have an idea of 5 Big Actions Kate could advocate.
In fairness, I don’t think they plagiarised – I suspect that the other surveys were carried out by Ipsos Mori. There is a reference list at the end of the report of other research that they drew on.
What’s missing, however, are any appendices with their survey instruments – I’d like to have seen those.
I wonder who paid for this because by the wording it sounds like Kindred2 provided the funding. At the very least, the Royal Foundation could have provided the funds.
The manic, overdone faces are just way too much. And I will believe that the sky is green before I’ll believe nine years went into this make-work “project.” That lie alone is enough to turn anyone off this thing.
I may or may not have tried to recreate that crazed open mouth smile in front of the mirror. It’s not easy.
I think my favorite part of the article is where they say that the Early Years project is the result of 9 years of work in which she did “dozens of engagements across the UK.” Dozens. Nine years of work, and she only did dozens of engagements. You would think after nine years, your engagement numbers would be measured in hundreds, if not thousands.
It’s clear they counted up all the engagements with kids over the nine years and sadly couldn’t even get to a hundred. So lazy.
YES, Kate’s Chuckie smile is on full display in a couple of those pics.
How exactly is she expecting to enact real changes without highlighting how the government has failed to support parents and children? Where are the results pointing to how poverty and food insecurity affects young children? I just don’t see how she can expect to achieve anything without dipping her well shod toe into politics and we know how the press will react to that.
Exactly! They are acting like she is a pioneer into the field of early childhood education. The studies have been done, the research is already there. What is needed are sound policies governments will actually implement.
+1 People know what kids needs, they know what to do but what they need is the government to support them
You have summed up my irritation perfectly. So we have the results of the survey. WHAT in the actual practicality of things, is going to be done about it?
I guess the she’ll take another ten years to come up with solutions.
As mentioned upthread, the only way she can make anything useful happen with this survey is to become politically active. “Raising awareness” is not very useful unless it results in meaningful change — changes to government policy that involve better policies, programs and funding. Is she going to help make that happen? Or is she going to drop the whole thing unfinished? Time will tell.
“…next year, The Duchess will announce ambitious plans to help elevate the importance of early childhood.” She’s still just planning to Raise Awareness. She wants to “elevate the importance of early childhood,” she doesn’t want to “alleviate the most common pitfalls of early childhood,” or “enact policies that will benefit children in their early years,” or even “raise money for these charities that are already working with parents of children under the age of 5.” No. She just wants to “elevate the importance,” which I’m interpreting as raising awareness about how important the early years are. As if we didn’t know already!
All of this “work,” all of this time spent, all of the tweets and videos and articles in the press and shiny PR to get us excited about what’s coming next, and it’s all just a long con. She’s going to spend YEARS making us think that she is slowly, slowly, slowly building up to something, and in the end it’s going to just be raising awareness, like everything else she does. She is really drawing this whole “survey project” out way too long. Each step is built up to be the Biggest Thing Kate has Ever Done and then it ends up just being “the first step,” or the “launch,” and she promises that the next thing is going to be The Real Big Thing. The survey was supposed to be the Big Thing. But then it was just PR to “start a conversation,” and the results/insights were going to be the Big Thing, but they’re just more PR to “continue the conversation,” and next year she is building up to a new Big Thing, the actions or whatever, and it’s just going to be “continue-continuing the conversation.” There is no substance, every big “reveal” that they’ve expected us to wait for with bated breath is just Kate giving some kind of super bare minimum, overly simplistic bullet pointed 30 second video, followed by a promise that the next thing she does is going to be REALLY BIG. What if instead of spending all their time on the PR for Kate, they just….. did a big thing?
She’s the duchess who cried Wolf.
They should tweet out a video of Whitney Houston singing The Greatest Love of All and be done with it. It would make more of an impact and be more meaningful.
I’m a bit puzzled. Who is the 2% that believes that a child’s future is predetermined at birth. Was it completed by royals and aristocrats?
“Don’t Know” was an option for that question, so I guess that’s the 2%.
how is “dont know” an acceptable survey answer?
how is multiple choice even an acceptable means of measuring insight, information or knowledge?
“Don’t know” is still suspicious if you live in reality. Perhaps they’re royal fans who are aware that royal children have predetermined lives at birth and wasn’t sure what to select here.
Her idiot fans?
Yep. Who are the 2% — it must be the royals themselves. Side note: if 98% truly don’t believe that a child’s future is pre-determined at birth, why is there still a monarchy? If Kate’s survey is supposed to “guide” her going forward, then wouldn’t that result (overwhelming 98%) mean Kate should start advocating to get rid of the monarchy? Is she going to follow the results of the survey, or isn’t she?
These people don’t have the follow through to come to that conclusion.
So, this is the part that drives me batty:
“which will help shape key areas of focus in the Duchess of Cambridge’s focus on early childhood development and how it shapes the rest of our lives.”
This is still about Kate learning how to duchess. this is still about kate trying to find “Something” to make her seem like more than her clothes and hair. These insights are going to HELP shape the KEY AREAS of FOCUS in her work. She doesn’t already have a focus. She has “early years” and is literally going to use the results of this “survey” to figure out if she should focus on….what? nature vs nurture? parents’ wellbeing?
And I think a lot of this work is going to fall flat among parents because it does sound SO tone deaf. I’m a parent with kids around the same age as Kate’s and I am put off by some of these comments. It does sound like the rich white royal is going to come down from her throne and help all of us peasants who have to choose sometimes.
She has 4 months to go until she’ll have been a duchess for 10 years too.
I’m sure some of the papers will do a 10 Year Royal Wedding Anniversary special, but what do Kate and William have to show for that time? I’m guessing a whole lot of focus will be on the children and maybe her hair and dresses and not a lot else.
The children, her hair/clothes, and their few big tours. That’s really all they have and their tours are basically just vacations for them.
If she wants to focus on early years development and how it shapes our lives, how about just doing a damn degree in early years development? This is just absurd. If she has a keen interest in something, just go and study it!
I really think she is just terribly dull and narrow-minded, because the early years stuff seems to have been proposed to her just because she was a mother with young children. She has no real interest in it, she’s just somewhat engaged with the topic because she gave birth. Which leads me to think she has absolutely no life interests or curiosity about anything. (Oh well…photography maybe, but that’s it).
This all feels very much like #PippaTips for early childhood, no? Completely inane and useless.
Does anyone here know whether there has been any childhood development researchers (forgive me if that’s not the correct terminology) interviewed about this for their opinion(s)? I just can’t help but think those highly educated/trained researchers are sitting there side-eying the HELL out of this whole thing. If they even care at all?
@cmc188 If there were researchers consulted, and she didn’t cite their research here, it’s plagiarism. No one worth their salt would contribute to this research and be okay with not being cited. From an academic perspective, what she reveals here is wholly unprofessional and unacceptable for its lack of reference to the foundational researchers who led her to these conclusions, and the people who came alongside her to contribute to these findings. Claiming their work as her own is enough to get her kicked out of any university or opportunity for publication.
I work in educational research as a professor and researcher. The “unrivaled insights” results are as basic as Maslow and Erickson and Piaget. It’s embarrassing how simple all of this is – similar research was being done mid-century. While my specialty is not ECE and I don’t claim it as my expertise, I know enough to say she’s full of it. Not only that, it is expected that the citing of results is couched in a conversation about how the research adds to what we already know, while CITING that. For instance, this presentation should say “Maslow (1956) says that we must attend to children’s physical needs before we expect them to make academic gains. This research shows that _________.” I don’t see any of that. Apparently her research is so revolutionary that hundreds of years of research is wiped away and discounted; all that remains is buttons and wiglets.
Thank you. This is all basic stuff covered for years even in intro psych courses.
@Noodle – thanks for the insight and I’m in complete agreement with you! I’m also in research, but in a very different field and haven’t been closely following this because … I find it all very dumb. When her “survey” was first announced I did pay more attention and felt like I could probably do the same thing, off the side of my desk, with enough of background to the same effect and it would be less than revolutionary, lol, certainly nothing news worthy or publishable.
As the stories have popped up here on Celebitchy, I will occasionally read them and each time I’ve wondered – where are the actual researchers in this field?! You put everything far more eloquently and succinctly than I could, so thank you 🙂
Great response @noodle. I was an editor of an academic journal for years and this is… galling to say the least.
Problem is as you say, yeah its a load of hogwash but truthfully, so much of England is utterly poor and adoring of royal family, if this message gets through to them then why not? I used to work in children’s charities, we harped on this stuff for years – in terms of nutrition/care/first 1000 days etc — so yeah people in the know would laugh this off. But a lot of charities work with communities abroad, not here in Britain, and this message somehow gets lost. Yeah she’s lazy and petulant but hopefully something will click with the royal adoring fans to actually feed their kids’ breakfast.
The royal adoring fans who like W&K? All retirees who are long past raising children.
I think it is an important discussion to have so kudos for bringing awareness to an age group too often asked to just go by when they are vulnerable and dependants on the adults around them.
That being said, a good or bad childhood is not determined by the wealth of the parents and this should be stressed too- easier for wealthy parents to provide food and toys, but time, respect and affection needs are not necessarily considered.
This is why with all her bads, and I was never a fan of her lack of work and copycat or lack of style, but she is bringing up a good topic that is actually important and rarely brought up.
This is a good topic but she refuses to go beyond the surface of “The early years are important”
Wealth and access to resources is not a substitute for affection but being raised on “loves and kisses” isn’t enough for kids – as much as parents would like that. If she can talk about introducing resources such as free childcare or expanding it in less wealthy areas, creating baby banks or highlighting them (which she did in the summer) and helping charities expand their reach and resources, that would be far more useful and practical than 5 questions.
But she won’t because a) a lot of Early Years stuff has been cut by the Tories which could be considered too “political” if she tries to reverse it (shouldn’t be considered political but here we are) and b) she doesn’t want to go beyond the surface because why should she? She gets away with everything now that Meghan is here
A topic rarely brought up? lol
There is tons of existing research on this.
In lots of countries.
I’m in california and we have First Five, we have had this program since before I had my older son who is now 25!
It starts with pregnancy and covers til 5 (then we have other programs after that)
It’s a program that covers health, education, intervention, testing ect, access to food.
Her “survey” is crap because it’s already been done. A lot. With many existing programs putting it in action.
Instead of wasting time and money on reinventing the wheel, they should have built on existing studies and tailored it to G.B. and thier countries issues.
I mean there are United Nations programmes on early childhood development. Many developing countries have had ECD programmes since way back in the 1990s. It’s telling that her survey avoids political and economic contexts as it would otherwise force people to take a look at the Tory government’s role here (as pointed out by the above commenter). There are others that have pointed to the similarities to Melania and I agree. This is reminiscent of Melania’s project on bullying and frankly it’s insulting.
The First 5 program in California is great. In fact, that program provided my preschool a grant that helped subsidize our very high tuition and they had us fill out surveys at the school to help measure our child’s progress. It was a very small grant but it was a welcome financial help, and it is available to a lot of really good preschools statewide. Programs like this need concrete goals and results, government policy and departments, expertise and funding behind it, otherwise it’s just PR and a vanity project.
There’s this guy called called Piaget that started talking about it in 1936 and his theory has been taught for well over half a century. When I did my undergrad and took a few first year intro psych courses it was covered then and that was a while ago.
Nothing Kate has done here is new or properly researched or does anything but try to make her look less useless.
“Most prestigious award” and “unrivaled insight”. Kate and Will aren’t trying to imitate Harry and Meghan; they are taking cues from Trump.
THIS. Trump, Keen and Workshy. Peas in a pod.
I’m way too biased to judge this fairly, but I’m always amazed by the way the media mobilizes to celebrate her. That they regurgitate her talking points like “biggest ever”, “unrivaled”, “milestone” etc. without even a question, seems so.. dishonest? Also, 500,000 does not equal nearly a million tf
Anyway, I find consolation in knowing only a small segment of the population cares about her shameless self-aggrandizement. Nearly 10 years to share (not even implement!) her solutions, yet in this year alone, when needs have been most severe, Marcus Rashford has already carried out a successful children’s initiative, complete with govt funding. The standards for her success are pathetic.
I kinda thought this article’s quotes were low key trolling- the mention that she keeps her documents in a binder (see! She has serious props for her research Barbie cosplay!) and the dozens of events over 9 years is a bit of a laugh along w the privately studying. Lolz. Maybe the press really is in on the joke that is her work ethic?
Also the number of survey respondents keeps changing- wasn’t it over 500,000 last time and now it’s at 1m?
This is her so called passion project for 9 years and she has done only a dozen of engagements in 9 years? Pathetic.
The fact that the results include a question about the pandemic that wasn’t on the survey……wow. Even if SHE wasn’t all that interested in working, the fact that her staff couldn’t pull something better together for is disappointing. What’s super disappointing is this is not a bad subject to tackle and she has the resources to do so in an impactful meaningful way. It probably won’t be, not from her at least but hopefully we’ll discover some organization that do great work in this area.
That’s because:
Kate’s staff drew from “a ‘nationally representative’ face-to-face survey of over 3,700 people, a survey on the impact of COVID-19, in-depth research on the importance of the early years, and ethnographic research with 12 families.”
Small sample size too!
That’s the “best” part about this – someone realized somewhere along the way that their survey was crap so they had to draw on data from another survey. which in a sense is okay – why reinvent the wheel, there’s nothing wrong with drawing on work that others have done (with proper credit), but don’t act like your work as that groundbreaking when it wasn’t even enough for your own team’s BS social media announcement.
Marcus rashford has done more for early child development in a few months than kate in the past 9 years. What exactly was the researched population in this survey? Didn’t this girl graduate uni? Doesn’t she know how to properly put together a research. Im still so confused about these 5 big questions
She found the answers to her questions ok. But what exactly is she going to do with those numbers? What does she recommend that needs changing? Is she going to approach the government? Or was this survey supposed to tell the parents what they are doing wrong?
This is an excellent point about what Rashford has been doing. If Kate cared about anything other than self aggrandize for she would have joined up with him to help with the school lunch issue.
I’m not surprised she hasn’t done anything regarding the school lunch issue. It would be deemed too political by the Palace.
I’m not surprised that she hasn’t done anything for Marcus Rashford a campaign or anything similar, not just because it’s political. Doing something that would actually make a difference and bring about ‘actual’ change is not what kate does. This 5 question survey is smoke and mirrors. Kate gets to pretend she cares and is doing something, but really it’s nothing. There are no calls to action, no changes made and no one benefits at all. It’s all a vanity project for Kate.
It’s funny how Marcus Rashford never spent 8 years working on a survey. He actually go sh*t done by getting to the heart of the matter.
@Cecilia ….you said it!
Are Bazaar trolling(?):
“In photos shared by her team, a keen duchess can be seen in an ivory blazer studiously taking notes alongside detailed printouts she is keeping in a binder.”
Also, how on earth does one short survey, with 4 multiple choice questions and one write what you want here, constitute ‘unrivalled insight’? Furthermore, the use of someone else’s Covid survey makes it look like they’ve done the hard work and they haven’t!
I can’t believe they are talking about her outfit in an article like this. She’s like a child play acting an adult. Maybe they are trolling her? You don’t describe an intelligent substantive woman in this way when she has something of value to add. I mean it’s clear Kate doesn’t, but this is bad.
Her fans are also talking about her outfit and hair because there’s no substance. This whole thing is The Emperor’s New Clothes level of pretend.
Why can’t they just like Kate and admit she’s kind of a bimbo? It’s escapism anyway.
Is there a country in the entire world that doesn’t have clear data and programmes about the importance of under fives? Other than, I guess, England.
The funny thing is that clearly England does believe it is important:
> 15 hours a week of free educational childcare for 3 and 4 year olds
> Free education for children age 5 and above
> Free school lunch meal for all children under 7
> Free breakfast and lunch meals for all poorer children aged 5-16 (schools trips may be reimbursed too and they’ll get a free packed lunch for it)
> Child benefit of £21.05 per week for most parents up until the first child is 16 (£13.95 per week if not the oldest child)
> Free universal health care (including free glasses and dental care for children)
> Multiple other benefits too for poorer families including income support and rent
I wonder if Kate is even aware of this.
I agree, there is a lot of judgement in this report. Also her original survey has been undermined by the COVID study. It would have been better if the impact of COVID was talked about in separate report. But we know why she had to add COVID because her original survey was seriously flawed. I also noticed that there was no mention of poverty or hunger. These issues have a major impact on early childhood development. To me it seems that this project was really about the mental health of parents and not really about the early development of children. Maybe she should have just focused on parents’ mental health.
The royal reporters are saying that she doesn’t intend to influence or change public policy. If this is the case, what’s the real purpose of this work? Just like William’s Earthshot Prize, they can’t bring about real change without input from the Government.
This is a flop of Melania Trump “Be Best” proportions. And like Melania and “Be Best”, Kate will do nothing and this hyped up project will have zero impact. This is nothing but busy work for a lazy, uninspired, and dimwitted person who’s devoid of passion. Fool the taxpayers to make them think she’s doing something to earn those hundreds of millions her family lives off of.
The Cambridge crew has had way too many similarities to the trump team in terms of unprofessionalism and incompetence. But then again both couples are narcissistic dullards who feel they deserve praise despite being intellectually barren and shallow humans.
As an actual researcher, I can’t even with this nonsense. I’m trying to think of how my PhD supervisor and the ethics board of my university would have reacted if I had proposed such an embarrassment of a project and tried to bill it as giving me “unrivaled” insight into early development. I’d have been laughed out of my PhD program…..
I’ve seen better structured surveys from grade school students. Sure, they’re usually about playground equipment, but still.
I feel for you. I only ever did an undergrad in social science and this survey would have been a failure even at that level. I can’t imagine being professionally trained in conducting research and seeing this childish garbage being praised. The UK really is no different than North Korea or China in praising these buffoons for doing nothing.
if any actual serious researchers support this nonsense it will be such an embarrassment.
I’m embarrassed for royal reporters having to write up this drivel. As I said on the other post there was no need to reinvent the wheel- work with the existing studies & highlight orgs& charities already working in this area.
If this is what Anne was referring to about royal work in her vanity fair article earlier this year then I agree.
They really need to stop lying about her working on this for nine years. This is a lie on the level of Kim Jong Un doing a hole in one at age five.
It’s pretty obvious Kate did nothing for years and the first we see a mention of broken Britain was the Friday before the Monday launch of Meghan’s cookbook project, courtesy of a DM article by Rebecca English… so I.e. Carole called her up to do a write up.
If she has worked on this for nine years then she needs to specify when from 2011 to 2018 that she did ANY work on this issue.
It’s really odd to me that Kate doesn’t appear own a computer. Nothing wrong with taking notes. It’s just most working people have a computer close by when working. And even stranger, her desk is clean as hell. I’ve seen super organized neat freak’s desks before. They don’t look this organized until they straighten up to leave for the day.
If Kate had a job she would have understood that most people do office work with a laptop or desk top. But she’s never worked in her life so her image of working is what the older royals do, but they are senior citizens who are not as comfortable using computers, as is common for baby boomers and older. It’s all fakery.
She’s cosplaying high school or university classes where you watch the teacher, or a power point, or a video, and take notes in your notebook or binder. School is the only semi-professional experience she’s ever had and her high school experience with office supplies extended only to a pen a notebook on a clean desk that you don’t actually own, you just use for the one hour you’re in class before packing up all your stuff so the next student can use the desk. She has no concept of a permanent adult office desk that only she sits at day after day in order to work on an ongoing project.
Yeah someone at Kensington Palace could’ve and should’ve hooked her up with a good, non hackable computer to do her work on by now. Other European Royals have been photographed doing work on computers and tablets so this is not some royal issue.
It just exposes how unserious she is about her work in general.
This whole thing is embarrassing. I can’t.
She certainly is a conceited big-head: she has never even looked after her own three children by herself even for one single week. But now the Know-all of Cambridge is going to tell millions of parents how to correctly raise their children. A landmark study of arrogance with unrivalled insights into how she intends to pad her engagement numbers for the next five years.
I’m appalled. She is doing busy work that is dumb enough to believe that she is mentally incompetent. Seriously, this seems like a kindergarten level insight.
And it was all a fake anyway- they used data from other surveys.
And the 76% under 5 years old thing- early childhood is by definition those ages, but due to the way it’s worded they make it seem like a revelation. It’s not.
She has a huge platform, she could be making a difference in the world. Instead she’s judging people as lesser than her family for not being rich, “happily” married, and politically ambitious (her mom, I mean).
What a waste.
The Fail has a great headline – ‘Kate gets political’ but I haven’t clicked on it to read it but am sure it all aglow about how wonderful she is; while am sure her speech is shaming poor, single parents and parents who have to work. She does this whenever she talks about this subject, it’s the same cut and paste speech every. time.
Barbara Bush – of all people – pushed early childhood education in the late 80s. H.W. signed the Head Start bills into law then, too. That was partially the result of field of early childhood education research truly taking off in the 70s and finally being publicly recognized. It is the year 2020 and this woman, who grew up *surrounded* by television programming and toys specifically designed to “enrich” children, thinks it is news to people? And if only they knew it was important they would what, Kate? The right wing governments your parents no doubt eagerly vote for gutted all the programs available to people trying to prevent a “difficult” childhood. The tone and text of that speech is disgusting.
Thank you! It’s funny though because Kate is like something out of Barbara Bush’s era, a post-war wife and mom in the 1950s. BB was far more interesting than Katie Keen though. But yeah, so many influential people tackled this stuff decades ago and actually got stuff done to change it. What’s Tory puppet and
handmaiden Kate gonna do? Not a damn thing because that would require her to fight the power and that patriarchal princess would never ever ever, honey.
I haven’t watched her “speech” yet but if it’s as anti-poor folks and tone deaf as some are saying it is, I hope she gets dragged for it. She deserves.
The engagement on twitter is very low and limited almost entirely to the UK. I know she and her team are seething over international praise Meghan’s getting and the international impact her op-ed making. Plus there are some well known people who write for a living talking about what a great writer MM is and how brilliant her article is.
This quote “ 98% of survey participants believe that a child’s future is not pre-determined at birth” . But that explains her husbands family and their very existence. That’s why this woman is being elevated to cover something this complex she is no where qualified nor capable of being in charge of. This one “Her goal being to bring positive change to the lives of children under five across the country and to also reduce the need for late intervention, which in England and Wales alone amounts to around $22.7 billion in government funding.” I see a set up for budget cuts in this area which is already underfunded. Don’t think they won’t cite this pathetic survey and the need for positivity when they make more cuts. Anyway, I find her and her work as deep as a puddle and nothing more to add because there is no there, there.
All of this over praising mediocrity of the Scambridges reminds me of when we see a beautiful cake 🎂. You start to cut it in slices only to realize that it’s uncooked in the middle! All pretty (barely) on the outside, and empty/undone on the inside!
So she and her team had almost 9 years of hard work for this project, or so they claim, and today was supposed to be her big day, but the engagement is almost nonexistent on social media. 😭
No one’s talking about it. The little that’s being said is like 90% from the royal rota and all 17 of her stans, aka Meghan haters. And then the other 10% is just mockery from sussexsquad people.😂
“In photos shared by her team, a keen duchess can be seen in an ivory blazer studiously taking notes alongside detailed printouts she is keeping in a binder.“
If someone described me working this way, I would seriously cry
My 8-year-old niece would be delighted to be described this way. And that’s about the level Kate is at.
Let me clear up the five big questions Kate and her staff have been asking for the last ten years:
Should I buy it in three other colours?
Does it have enough buttons?
Does my botox look natural?
Where is William?
Who is the fairest in the land?
There. Fixed.
🤣🤣
lol at Where is William.
Serious question: what does that army of courtiers and staff do all day?! I mean, Kate has always been queen of keenly doing very little, except for her kids and minimum royal handshaking. But, they have ALL this staff, and if early development work has been planned for nine years, why hasn’t just one of them come up with, like, anything tangible?! It’s shocking!
I suspect most of them like the fact they aren’t challenged. They enjoy the perks and get a job that sounds more impressive than it is on their cv.
After all look what happened when someone tried to make them work a little and actually take on projects that made a difference
Run off and leak to the press is all they seem to do
My favourite comment online about this story called Kate “The Duchess of Saying the Bleeding Obvious”. Can this be her new name please?
It’s the childhood policy version of Pippa’s tips. The latter Atleast was funny to mock as it wasn’t a huge waste of public money and only cost those who were stupid enough to buy the book
According to Gert’s Royals:
A total of 527,898 completed the #5bigquestions survey globally.
But:
Using IP Addresses they were able to identify 435,141 of whom were from the UK.
And the article says almost 1 million responded… quite a bit of rounding there.
@I PET GOAT 2 – my thoughts exactly. It feels like the level of praise itself is insulting.
I’m just wondering who her target audience is for this, women…moms? Surely her team knows we’re smarter than selling us this basic stuff. Kate and Co. you insult our intelligence.
9 years, DOZENS of engagements. Lol.
Dear Kate, there is a Swedish Princess who wears scrubs and works in a hospital wearing no makeup. No one makes fun of her and no one ever will. If you ever want to be known as more than waity Katy or duchess dolittle this is how it’s done. Someday they will probably put up a statue of her while you are mocked and scorned. But hey, the dm will keep liking your clothes.