Kate Middleton Responds To U.K. Parenting Survey '5 Big Insights'
Kate Middleton has always been passionate about helping children. From being a patron of the children’s mental health charity Place2be, to donating seven inches of her hair to a charity that makes wigs for child cancer patients to hosting a morale-boosting Easter Zoom chat with the children of front-line workers, she consistently shows up for kids.
In January, the Duchess of Cambridge asked the British public for their views on early childhood, to spark a national conversation and shape her future charity work and projects.
The survey, which the duke and duchess’ Royal Foundation commissioned Ipsos MORI to conduct, was called the 5 Big Questions. And the response from the British public was unprecedented.
“I was humbled that more than half a million people responded to the 5 big questions survey, showing just how much people wanted to talk about this,” the duchess said in her keynote speech on Friday at The Royal Foundation’s online event, “What the U.K. thinks about the Early Years.”
Watch Kate’s full keynote speech. Story continues below video.
The findings focused not just on more general beliefs and experiences around the early years, but also on how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing challenges for parents and caregivers of young children.
“The pandemic has reminded us just how much we value living in a world where people care for one another and the importance of feeling connected to the people around us. And it’s these connections, these relationships, that are founded in the earliest years of our lives,” said the Duchess of Cambridge.
She went on to stress that being a parent is not the only reason to care about children. “If we only expect people to take an interest in the early years when they have children [...] we are underestimating the huge role others can play in shaping our most formative years too.”
The duchess shared that meeting adults facing challenges and overcoming obstacles later in life, through her royal...