They’re the most famous parents-to-be in the world — but how will the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge raise their little bundle of joy?
From the beginning of their relationship, William and Kate have been determined to do things differently.
They lived together before they were married, waited seven years to get engaged and broke dozens of decades-old conventions at their April 2011 wedding.
Their approach to their new arrival has been no different. Kate allowed her sister Pippa Middleton to throw her a baby shower, something unheard of in the royal family, and William plans to attend the birth, something a royal father hasn’t done in living memory.
Instead of a palace, the first place the new baby will call home will be Michael and Carole Middleton’s thoroughly middle class house in Berkshire, where mum, dad and little one will spend six weeks after the birth.
It will be an inauspicious start to life for the next heir to the British throne, and it’s no accident. Above all, William and Kate want their baby to be as normal as possible.
There will be no full-time nanny, no army of child carers — they are passionate about raising their own baby on their terms. William even looks likely to become the first future king to change a nappy.
It’s a thoroughly unroyal attitude to child-rearing that was kindled in William by his mother, the late Princess Diana.
Diana did things differently when William and Harry were young. Instead of keeping the little princes wrapped up in royal cotton wool, she took them out into the real world.
They went to department stores to get their photos taken with Santa Claus (waiting in line like all the other kids), ate at McDonald’s and visited homeless shelters.
This childhood opened William’s eyes to how the other half lived but a loving and stable home was sadly out of his reach.
Enter Kate, with her extremely close, warm and incredibly normal middle class family.
It was in the Middleton’s home that William learnt what an ordinary loving family looked like. For the first time he ate dinner on his lap in front of the television, enjoyed lively discussions at the breakfast table and basked in the company of people who genuinely loved each other.
It is this closeness William and Kate want to replicate in their own family.
They will be the royal family’s first truly hands-on parents, eating meals with their kids, doing bath time duties and reading bed time stories.
It’s unorthodox but it could be the saving of the royal family and the final closure of the long and lingering chapter of misery that has beset the monarchy since the 1990s.
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