Prince Louis and the joy of being a third-born

All hail Prince Louis, the little face-pulling, raspberry-blowing, mother-baiting pre-schooler. His antics on the Buckingham Palace balcony and in the royal box during the Jubilee Pageant rivalled only Paddington Bear in scene-stealing appeal.

Cheeky, mischievous and naughty are just three of the adjectives that have been applied to his performance. There can’t be a parent alive who isn’t glad that they haven’t had to control a four-year-old in the full glare of the world’s attention – that tantrum one of mine threw at an airport in front of a coincidental audience of neighbours was bad enough.

His confident disdain for politeness is perhaps just part of his age – not to mention the fact his life has been spent in the weird world of Covid and lockdowns, which has left children, according to a report published in March, markedly less prepared for the social niceties of primary school. But for my money, Louis is in fact displaying the classic personality of the third-born and youngest.

The accepted wisdom of birth order is that the oldest are the responsible and anxious ones, the middle ones are people-pleasers and the youngest are feckless risk-takers. As a child, Prince William was once described as always looking like he was on the verge of tears, while Prince Harry looked like he was about to burst out laughing.

The birth order stereotype seems to be playing out again with the Cambridge trio. George already gives the impression of bearing the weight of history, preternaturally serious in his suits. Charlotte, the middle born, tells her younger brother when he needs to wave at the crowds. Louis might share that spectacularly neat side parting and those old-fashioned clothes with George, but little else in his demeanour.

Dr Kevin Leman is an American psychologist and father of five, who has been studying the effects of birth order since the Sixties. He believes that “babies of the family are social and outgoing, they are the most financially irresponsible of all birth orders… studies show that the lastborn is least likely to be disciplined and the least likely to toe the mark the way the older children did”.

I’m the middle child of three and have spent a lifetime convinced that my younger brother has been indulged in a way that my older brother and I were not. It’s still a shock to me that he holds down an important job and has raised exceptionally accomplished children who have graduated from Oxford and Yale. To me, he continues to be the boy who can’t be trusted with looking after his own passport.

Now that I’m a mother of three I see the privileges of being the lastborn from the other side. My youngest arrived only 20 months after her sister, her birth coinciding with the sort of reckless home renovation project traditionally favoured by new parents. She had no routines, no anxious attention, no attempts to make her sleep or eat regularly. I stuck her in a sling, fed her on demand, let her sleep in our bed and generally treated her in the same indulgent, loving but mildly neglectful way I treated the puppy we got 10 years later.

In comparison, my first-born had a near Victorian upbringing. Until he was in secondary school, my son had a strictly rationed half an hour of screen time daily. His littlest sister watched TikTok almost from birth. When he was finally allowed a smartphone it came with no data, while hers was unlimited, aptly called “full roaming” – an injustice that still rankles.

When my oldest started primary school, a veteran parent warned me to keep him away from children with older siblings. These kids were, allegedly, feral with late bedtimes, unsuitable Xbox games and a habit of telling innocents the truth about both sex and Father Christmas.

Nearly a decade later, I was the parent of that child as a mother told me of the great scandal of Year 6. “There are children,” she whispered, “who have been watching Love Island.” My 10-year-old was not only watching it, she was teaching the other kids the lingo and harbouring ambitions to go on it.

In some ways, she’s so much older than her years – she’s fiercely independent, able to navigate London public transport alone since the age of 10, does her own laundry and would, if allowed, cook all her own meals. Yet she curls up with me on the sofa in a way that her siblings ceased to do years before. In many ways, it’s the best of all worlds of parenting – none of the hard work, all of the cuddles.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge clearly enjoy indulging their third born, too, with the caption on their official Instagram page the day after the Jubilee Weekend: “We all had an incredible time… especially Louis!”