Huw Price in Pearls and Irritations:
In 2012 I was in Cambridge, newly enthroned as the Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy. The town had a new Duke and Duchess that year, too, in William and Kate. When they announced they were expecting their first child, I wrote a piece for The Conversation. Welcome as Baby Cambridge would be, I said, she or he was entitled to normal choices in life.
I followed up with a second piece, after George’s birth. I pointed out that if we moved quickly, he could be allowed a comparatively normal childhood, with the opportunity to choose his own path. Like the then Prince of Wales, I became a grandfather that year. I congratulated him, but said that his grandson should not be denied freedoms that mine would take for granted.
I didn’t get much traction at the time, but the window has been shifting. In the wake of Harry’s book Spare, several writers made similar points. In the Guardian, for example, Jonathan Freedland compared the Windsors to the Truman Show. Kate Williams argued we don’t need a spare, and that Windsor children except the heir should be allowed a normal life. And Catherine Bennett said, “If the country can’t do without the family entirely, we could surely ration ourselves to one child victim per generation.”
This is progress, by my lights, especially Bennett’s use of the phrase ‘child victim’. But even she doesn’t spell out the important point.
More here.
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