Kate Middleton's Shaping Us Campaign Faces Criticism
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This week, Kate Middleton launched her first major project as Princess of Wales: "Shaping Us," an awareness campaign dedicated to spotlighting the importance of early childhood. "It is essential, to not only understand the unique importance of our earliest years, but to know what we can all do to help raise future generations of happy, healthy adults," Kate said in a speech at a pre-launch event.
Some critics are saying though her intentions are good, and early childhood is important, awareness is not enough.
"We are well accustomed to MPs and royalty visiting early years settings, praising the invaluable work of practitioners from David Cameron to Gordon Brown and the Queen Consort," Dr. Mine Conkbayir, a member of the Practitioners of the Early Years Sector, said, per Sky News. "But nothing is done. The time has long passed for 'awareness.' We need action — long-term investment and funding in the early years."
"Childcare providers are having to turn to food charities to provide nutritious meals for children while stagnant government funding still is not being directed to the sector," she added. "The paltry government funding of early years that is provided does not cover the provision of any food."
Many pointed out that the programs necessary to make children happy and healthy adults, as Kate is advocating for, have been cut in the UK, like Sure Start, an initiative launched in 1998 with the aim of "giving children the best possible start in life." In the past few years, hundreds of Sure Start centers have been closed.
As one UK resident, Chloë Reeves, tweeted, "The Princess of Wales looks to be launching a sincere & thoughtful campaign, but it's kind of wild that Sure Start was an evidence-based solution to the problems she's raising, was evaluated and found to be wonderfully successful, and we're sort of pretending it wasn't cut."
Another, SJ Howitt, wrote, "I'm curious whether The Princess of Wales knows that all our sure start centres and family centres have been closed and whether she is aware that was a political decision?" Yet another user, Carole Britton, who writes in her bio she is a "wife, mum, gran," tweeted, "Seeing the Princess of Wales at the launch of her ‘Shaping Us’ campaign, highlighting the importance of years 0 to 5, irked a little. We knew these were vital years in child development and ‘Sure Start’ was an initiative to try and address this. It needed work not scrapping!"
There's a difference between Kate's message and Sure Start, Naomi Eisenstadt, the first director of the Sure Start Unit in 1999, said. "Sure Start to begin with was explicitly aimed at families in poverty. It became universal because everybody wanted it, which was great," Eisenstadt told Newsweek. "She's trying to do something slightly different which is to say that there are some things all parents can do, should be doing, which are good for children. That's right and you can't argue with that. What's missing from the campaign is the political side of it. Everyone can be a good parent but there are circumstances that make it much harder for parents in poverty."
However, there's a limit to the Princess of Wales's ability to advocate for government programs, as senior royals are expected to remain politically neutral. The royal family is "expected to be above day-to-day politics," according to Craig Prescott, a constitutional expert at Bangor University in Wales.
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