While Prince Harry is a devoted father of two, he has admitted that he felt a “disconnection” to fatherhood when Prince Archie was born.
He made the revelation during his visit to Australia, while he was at an event hosted by Movember at the Whitten Oval.
The charity, which is dedicated to men’s health, also unveiled its research called More Than a Provider: Australian Fathers on Health, Identity and Experiences of Parenthood, at the event.
“Certainly I felt a disconnection because my wife was the one creating life, and I was there to witness it,” he explained at the event on April 15.
Archie was born on May 6, 2019, before Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, announced their plans to step away from the royal family in January 2020.
Two months later, they relocated to California and welcomed their daughter, Princess Lilibet, on June 4, 2021.
During his time at the Melbourne event, he told Movember’s global director of men’s health research, Dr Zac Seidler, that he went to therapy before he became a dad.
“Certainly, from a therapy standpoint, you want to be the best version of yourself for your kids. And I knew that I had stuff from the past that I needed to deal with and therefore, prepare myself to basically cleanse myself of the past,” he said.
“I think the biggest tip that I was given from my therapist in the U.K. was just be aware of how you feel once the baby is born,” he continued.
He reflected on children and parents having conversations at home that he never had with his parents.
With the conversations around mental health changing, he said children are “upgrades” of their parents.
“From my perspective, our kids are our upgrade. That’s not how I was taught, but that was my take on it — not to say I was an upgrade of my dad or that my kids are an upgrade of me,” Harry explained.
“That’s the approach that I take, to know that with the world the way that it goes, the kids that we bring up in today’s world need to be an upgrade.”
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