Sarah Ferguson gets candid about her difficult childhood

Sarah Ferguson reflected on the difficult childhood she had growing up with her parents.

In an interview with The Times, the Duchess of York has that parents today could not even imagine using the kind of language her parents did with her.

Fergie opened up about how her mother, Susan Barrantes, was “a child herself” when she started her family with Ronald Ferguson.

The duchess, 63, recalled that her father “used to call me a sheep’s a***” and her mother would “hit me” if she refused to eat semolina.

“My mother was a beautiful woman but she was a child herself. She didn’t know how to be a mummy,” Fergie told the outlet. “We would never dream now of using the language my parents used on us as children. Dad used to call me a sheep’s a***. If I refused to eat my semolina, Mum would hit me and say she needed to beat the devil out of me.”

Fergie previously talked about how her mother left their family when she was 14 to elope with a professional polo player in Argentina. However, she returned for her sister, Jane Ferguson’s wedding.

“Then my sister left to start her new married life in Australia and I lost them both on the same day,” she recalled.

“I never truly understood why my mother left me and it has taken me a long time to deal with my low self-esteem. When I was little, I used to leave notes in her dressing room saying, ‘Mummy, please don’t die in a car crash’. And of course, she did die in a car crash.”

Susan died at the age of 61 after her car collided head-on with a van in Argentina in 1998.

In 2021, Fergie shared how the late Queen Elizabeth was “more of a mother” to her than her own. She described her former mother-in-law as a “mentor” who “never faltered” when giving her support and advice.