Published: Jun 19, 2026
The recent reports that Prince George is expected to attend Eton College have prompted a predictable public conversation. Much of the debate I have seen so far has focused on privilege, elitism, and whether institutions such as Eton leave future leaders disconnected from the lives of ordinary people. These are important questions. But as a psychotherapist, I find myself wondering about a different issue.
Prince George is twelve years old, and, according to reports, is expected to begin at Eton this September, shortly after turning thirteen. While he already attends a school with a boarding element, this would represent a significantly greater degree of separation from home and family life. Whatever one’s views on royalty or privilege, it seems remarkable that so little attention is being paid to the psychological implications of this transition. We speak often about what boarding schools produce socially; we speak far less about what they ask children to endure emotionally.
More Than Homesickness
Supporters of boarding schools often describe separation from home as a valuable lesson in independence and resilience. Yet from an attachment perspective, the experience is more complex than simply learning to stand on one’s own feet. While adolescence naturally involves increasing autonomy, it also remains a period in which the availability of primary caregivers continues to provide an essential foundation for emotional development.
When a child leaves home for prolonged periods, they are experiencing more than a change of school. They are leaving a familiar environment which, for many, has provided comfort and security. For some children, this transition may be manageable. But for others, it may evoke feelings of grief, loss, abandonment, rejection, or confusion.
Children rarely experience such events as adults do. They don’t necessarily think, “My parents believe this school is best for me.” Instead, they may wonder, “Why am I being sent away? Why can’t I stay with my family? What does this mean about my place within it?” These questions are not always conscious, yet they can shape how a child understands relationships and dependence. The challenge is not only the separation itself, but also the meanings a child makes of that separation.
The Adaptation That Looks Like Confidence
The psychoanalyst Joy Schaverien has written extensively about what she termed “boarding school syndrome” – a constellation of long-term psychological challenges associated with early separation through boarding school.1
Schaverien went as far as to argue that “sending young children to boarding school may be considered a particularly British form of child abuse and social control.”1 Similarly, psychotherapist Nick Duffell, whose earlier work informed Schaverien’s conceptualisation of boarding school experiences, popularised the term “boarding school survivor” and explored how children often cope with boarding environments by developing what he described as “a false adulthood”:
“They have this false sense of entitlement, a false kind of individuality, a false adulthood. Look at … them … We can see it, our body language knows it. They are people who make a lot of noise and they appeal to those who are actually in a lot of fear about the way the world is going. Because they mistake that noise for strength. It’s not strength, it’s bluster.” 2
The child learns quickly that vulnerability is difficult to express. Longing for home may be mocked. Tears may be humiliating. Dependence may feel dangerous. As a result, many children become impressively self-sufficient, which, from the outside, can appear as confidence, but may also be a defensive adaptation: the child learns to function without needing anyone.
But psychological self-sufficiency and genuine emotional maturity are not the same thing. In fact, it can be argued that they are opposites. Genuine maturity involves being able to recognise needs, communicate them, and remain connected to others whilst carrying them. A child who survives by becoming emotionally self-reliant is simultaneously disconnected from parts of themselves. Schaverien describes this process as an encapsulation of the self: the vulnerable, dependent, emotional child becomes hidden behind a competent exterior.3 This adaptation may help a child survive institutional life, but the question is what happens when that adaptation becomes a personality structure.
This is why I find the public conversation about Eton incomplete. Elite boarding schools are often celebrated for producing confident leaders, but if confidence is achieved through emotional self-protection, we must ask what kind of confidence is actually being cultivated. The concern for me is not simply that boarding schools expose children primarily to privilege, it is that emotional survival within such institutions can encourage forms of psychological distancing that make it harder to remain in touch with one’s own vulnerability, and, by extension, the vulnerability of others.
A World of Men
There is another aspect of this decision that receives relatively little attention: Eton is not simply a boarding school; it is an all-boys boarding school.
This is not an argument against every single-sex school. Many children have positive experiences within them. However, when an all-male environment is combined with boarding, a child’s day-to-day social world becomes narrower. As well as being educated in a male-dominated environment, he is also living within one. The daily presence of mothers, sisters, female peers, and other women becomes significantly reduced during a critical developmental period.
During adolescence, young people are learning not only academic subjects but also how to understand themselves in relation to others. These lessons are learned through ordinary daily encounters with a wide variety of people. And so, an all-boys boarding environment inevitably shapes which relationships are most available and which are less available. It seems reasonable to ask what is gained and what is lost when a significant proportion of a young person’s formative years is spent in an environment where one half of society is largely absent from daily life.
This question feels particularly relevant when discussing a future king. The monarchy is often described as a symbol of national unity, yet leadership also requires the capacity to understand lives and experiences different from one’s own. Exposure to difference – including differences of sex and gender – is part of how that understanding develops. While much of the public conversation has focused on whether Eton will distance Prince George from “ordinary people”, I think that concern can be taken a step further. Prince George is already growing up in circumstances that are highly unusual and far removed from most people’s experience. My concern is that an all-boys boarding environment narrows his relational world further, reducing his everyday contact with girls and women and, in doing so, limiting his exposure to perspectives that would be valuable in the development of his own identity and that he will one day be expected to represent as much as those of men.
Ultimately, the question for me is whether the “confidence” and prestige such institutions promise are worth the emotional, relational, and developmental costs they may require of a thirteen-year-old child.
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1 Schaverien, J. (2015). Boarding school syndrome: The psychological trauma of the ‘privileged’ child. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315716305
2 Duffell, N. (2019, August 4). Why boarding schools produce bad leaders. RNZ. https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018707127/dr-nick-duffell-why-boarding-schools-produce-bad-leaders
3 Schaverien, J. (2004). Boarding school: The trauma of the ‘privileged’ child. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 49(5), 683-705. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0021-8774.2004.00495.x
