The Unexpected Way Meghan Markle Is Teaching Archie and Lilibet About Money and Privilege

THE RUNDOWN

• In a new podcast interview, Meghan Markle revealed how she is using gardening to teach her 6-year-old son, Archie, and 4-year-old daughter, Lilibet, about the value of things and money.
• Meghan spoke about how important it is, especially for her children who have privilege, to learn these lessons at a young age.
• Meghan also explained how her self-esteem changed after becoming a mother, marking an evolution from her “chapter of self-doubt as an auditioning actor.”

Meghan Markle’s children, Archie and Lilibet, are just six and four years old, respectively. But the Duchess of Sussex is already teaching them to understand the value of things through gardening and a little entrepreneurship. She spoke to Emma Grede on Aspire With Emma Grede about the conversations she is having with her children about money—and why she is approaching it the way she is at their Montecito, California, home.

“We sometimes do a little farmer’s market stand,” she began. “We grow a lot of veggies and...gardening is really, really so great for children because it teaches them patience. [It] teaches them to value and appreciate their food. So you start from seed, and you watch it grow, and they wait. But with that, it’s like, now do you want to sell your harvest? And do you want to share it with our community? And also, what do you want to do with those funds once you have them? So really starting to understand, as they’re learning counting and numbers and all of those things, that there’s a cost and a price for things.

“And I think that’s key for children to understand that—especially children who are very lucky to have a home that has privilege. You need to know that, just like manners and taking care of the things around you, there is a value on things. And in our life, for my husband and I, it’s really important that they understand the value of things.”

Equally important to Meghan is being a good role model for Archie and Lili. She spoke to Grede about how motherhood changed her own self-esteem.

She touched on how brutal auditions through her acting career shaped her view of herself in her twenties and thirties.

“If I was going in for an audition...you have to remember this was a very different time than it is now,” she prefaced. “It was ‘girl next door’ that was typically blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and a certain look. But because I’m half white, I would also be submitted for those roles. And then if it was a character that had any sort of ethnicity, there was always a bit of a edge to those characters. But I’d be submitted for those roles. And...to a lot of people in casting, they thought I was Latina. So I share that because—and I’ve shared this before—it was a numbers game. If I’m only up for 10 parts, that could be 10 nos. But if I’m up for 30 parts, because I can fit into so many different rooms, that could be 30 nos.

“That is a lot to chip away at your self-esteem,” she continued. “That is really hard....I went through my chapter of self-doubt as an auditioning actor and beyond that, and when you’re so consumed [with] what everyone around you thinks of you, that can be a really hard way to live. So I think as I’ve gotten older—certainly in my forties and as a mom—you want to set the example for what your children are going to think about themselves. And that, you can’t have an imposter syndrome around. You have to be so authentically the role model and the example of competence, self-forgiveness, kindness, fun—all of those things. You can’t fake that. You want to model that for them. So all of that really shifted in the past six years of becoming a mom for me.”

You can listen to their full discussion here.