Is Meghan Seeking to Recreate Kate's Happy Childhood for Archie and Lili?
Yesterday was Prince George’s 12th birthday! Because he is the only one of Kate’s children with whom she stayed the night in the hospital after birth, I feel like George gets a two-day celebration, because in addition to marking his birthday on the 22nd, fans think back to the 23rd, too—the day he was presented on the steps of the Lindo Wing.
Hello! ran an article today about how Kate “stays up all night” baking her children’s birthday cakes, and some Meghan fan sub-tweeted that she (the poster) highly doubts the story is true, since she had never heard Kate say she baked until after With Love, Meghan aired on Netflix. This uninformed individual seems to think Kate is copying Meghan.
It made me think about the sheer ignorance that pervades society generally. All this critical poster needed to do was read the article (not just the headline) to see that Kate discussed her birthday-cake-baking habits with Mary Berry on a baking show in 2019. Not only before With Love, Meghan aired, but before Meghan even flamed out of the royal family. But that’s where we are these days. People only read headlines and that’s how they form opinions.
It also made me think how so many of these Meghan fans/Kate-haters don’t really know anything about Kate or how family background affects your life. Kate is the child of Carole (and Mike) Middleton who made millions on her party company because she had an organic talent for being a hands-on mom and hostess. Carole loved to put together birthday parties for her little ones herself—making the cakes, stuffing the party favor bags, decorating etc. It was after others asked her to help them do the same that Carole turned her talent into a multi-million dollar company. But the key is that Kate was raised in that environment. Her childhood memories are full of happy scenes with homemade birthday cakes and handmade/crafty party decorations. It is, therefore, far more likely than not that Kate does in fact bake the birthday cakes herself and that she tries to create homemade celebrations to pass on to her children the same warm memories that shaped her own childhood. I have to assume these commenters did not experience that themselves, which brings me back around to Meghan.
This is one area where I will hand it to Meghan: she might be trying to break her own childhood cycle and give her little ones something she never experienced, but something she saw others did have and wants her children to have.
Meghan was obviously a latch-key kid whose divorced parents were both busy working to keep their respective bills paid. In With Love, Meghan, it becomes very clear that Meghan is inventing a new persona. She might have been a “foodie” as a single girl in Toronto, but that just means she was finally making money and enjoying fine dining—it’s a pretty typical young, single, working-girl cliché. It doesn’t mean she was cooking up a storm in the kitchen, which Meghan actually admits at one point. Very little about her brand or show is “as ever,” except the rosé. In the episode where Meghan hosts Delfina Blaquier, Meghan asks Delfina is she likes to cook, and Delfina immediately says she cooks all the time. You get the sense that is true, especially when Delfina remarks that her mother taught her to cook. As an aside, this contributed to the weird vibe of the show, as Meghan taught Delfina (almost certainly a more accomplished cook and hostess) to make focaccia—a bread Meghan just learned about a few weeks before.
At the same time, though, I appreciate that Meghan has seen something good, something she is attracted to. She probably experienced this while living in the intimacy of the royal family—watching Kate organize birthday parties for George, Charlotte, and Louis, doing a lot of things from scratch and making wonderful memories for her children. Perhaps Meghan continued to observe it as she socialized with people like Delfina, whose cultural background, centered on food and family, would be a culture shock to a former Toronto foodie and take-out girl. In the episode where Meghan puts together a birthday party, I felt like I was watching a scene from Pippa Middleton’s party book describing the Middleton birthday parties. She observed a different way to raise a family and although she is way overdoing the flower sprinkles, she is trying.
I think Meghan’s show is dud and she lacks authenticity, but she is human and wants to be happy. While living in close proximity to William and Kate, Meghan saw another way of doing life and raising children, and it seems to have resonated with her. She obviously wants to break the cycle and give her children something she didn’t have—something she thinks is better. And no one can fault her for that!
Meghan’s backstory seems to shift depending on who she’s chatting to, doesn’t it? Before she ever met Harry, she wrote about and gave many interviews referencing her dad being the hands-on type…taking her out to posh restaurants after dance class, picking her up from school and her spending all her time with him on Married with Children set—apparently that’s where the acting spark lit up.
When she was a guest judge on Kids’ MasterChef, she waxed lyrical about how some dish reminded her of “farm-to-table” grub from her childhood. Sounds rather idyllic, doesn’t it?
But fast forward a few years, and suddenly it’s all about growing up skint, Sizzler nights being a real treat, and living off TV dinners as a latchkey kid. It’s quite the transformation.
Makes you wonder what version of her childhood we’ll be served in a few years’s time. Feels a bit like she’s trying to recreate something she saw in Kate, who’s got a solid, close-knit family that’s being passed down to her kids, no fuss. Whereas Meghan and Harry’s little ones… well, they’ve got their gran, sure, but where are the cousins, the grandparents, the bigger family circle? That absence—that’s on Harry and Meghan, really.
No amount of artisanal flower sprinkles can make up for a lack of familial relationships and support.
I can relate a lot to Meghan’s upbringing in the sense my mom was not very domestic. I did have great birthday parties, but my mom wasn’t into cooking, so dinner was often frozen prepackaged meals or takeout. As a child I had the impression “normal” families all had a home cooked dinner every night around the dinner table. I am the same age as Kate and Meghan, and from my adult perspective, I see now that by the 90s, many women worked outside the home and my home life was just as typical as my fantastical image of traditional dinner time. As a working parent now, I give myself loads of grace for not always cooking, but I do try to cook more and have sit down dinners as a family more than my parents did. I want my kids to feel like they are “normal.”
I saw all this because I can relate to why Meghan wants to come off as a domestic queen. She is trying to compensate for an insecurity. As ever (pun intended) Meghan needs to deal with her childhood wounds that have somehow wounded her psyche to the point that she does not feel remotely comfortable with herself. Instead, she is constantly playing a part, which, when your brand is yourself (rather than say a role on a TV show), not knowing what that is will sink you. She will never be successful as Meghan The Brand until she becomes comfortable with Meghan The Person. She hasn’t done that, and all but the most ardent fans can feel it in our bones when we watch her. It’s half pathetic, half insulting that she continues to try to force these concocted versions of herself on the world and when the world doesn’t respond, she screams prejudice in some form or another.