November 27, 2023 • 42 mins
Do you ever feel like you need to be perfect, that you are responsible for the emotions of others, you’re the organiser in the friendship group, highly self reliant, an overachiever, constantly being told your mature for your age? I would make a good guess that you are the eldest daughter.
In today's episode we break down the psychology behind 'eldest daughter syndrome' and how birth order and gender combines to create a certain personality profile and way of behaving and seeing the world. We explore ideas around:
- Birth order theory
- Parentification
- The mental load
- Friendships between first borns and last borns
- Delayed teenage rebellion
- Role modelling theory
- Daughtering
We also share tips for healing and taking care of yourself as the eldest daughter, especially in our 20s. Listen now.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we break
down the psychology of our twenties. I want to start
out by asking you a few questions. Do you ever
feel like you need to be perfect, that you are
(00:49):
responsible for the emotions of others. You are the organizer
of the friendship group, highly self reliant, an overachiever, constantly
aid anxious about the future, thinking about whether your siblings
and your parents are going to be okay. Do you
feel like you grew up too quickly, almost like you're
(01:10):
asleep for a huge chunk of your childhood and just
never got to experience it, cannot remember it at all.
I would make a good guess that if you answered
yes to all of those questions, you are the eldest daughter,
and you might be experiencing what has been coined as
eldest daughter syndrome. That is exactly what we are going
(01:34):
to be discussing in today's episode. This was so highly
requested after the episode we did on the Curse of
Being an Overachiever, where we spoke about this very briefly.
But if you haven't listened to that episode, make sure
you add it to your queue because it's kind of
like a sister episode in some way. It will answer
(01:54):
a lot more questions for you. But today we are
specifically just talking about the eldest daughter. So the eldest
daughter in a family often faces a very unique set
of experiences and I would say responsibilities due to kind
of the parallel influence of birth order, age, and then
(02:17):
gender as well. The pressure and the expectations associated with
these characteristics cause eldest daughters to develop very specific certain
personality traits or even mental health challenges as well. Because
they have been required to grow up a lot quicker,
be a role model or even a caregiver to their
young younger siblings, and also live up simultaneously to the
(02:42):
very high expectations of their parents. Eldest daughters often fit
a certain profile in that way, a certain personality profile.
They're often very self reliant, and independent. They find it
hard to trust other people with tasks that need to
be done because that would require them to give up
a sense of control. They often feel accountable for the
(03:06):
families happiness, future well being. They're complimented on being mature
for their age. They are labeled as an overachiever or
my favorite term, a gifted child. I despise that term
from a young age, and there's a lot of pressure,
(03:27):
either explicit or implicit, that has put on them to
get perfect grades and to really excel at their careers.
They have a lot of people pleasing tendencies, They are
afraid to say no, to let people down. And then
of course we have like the age old stereotype of
eldest daughters being very bossy and domineering, which if I'm
(03:47):
being honest, I tend to agree with. As the eldest child.
There are thousands, I would say, if not millions and
possibly billions, Let's stick with millions millions of eldest daughters
out there who can relate to these quote unquote symptoms
and the experiences of elder's daughter syndrome. We are seeing
(04:09):
viral tiktoks of people kind of describing the stress of
the excess of emotional and physical labor that we take on.
But most importantly, at the core of this experience, the
impression that we aren't being cared for the way that
we care for others. That is so critical, and I
think that is such a source of pain for eldest
(04:30):
daughters in particular. And when we see that many people,
I think talking about a unique experience of a certain
type of person in society. I think it's something that
we need to pay attention to and explore because there
is so much surprising psychology that comes with holding this
position and this role in the family, and I think
a lot of unexpected, sometimes long term consequences that linger
(04:53):
with us into adulthood, impacting things like how we view
our academics or work, or career success or romantic relationships,
even what happiness actually looks like for us. So there
are theories around birth order, around parentification, early twenties, rebellion,
gender theory, so much to cover. And I feel personally
(05:18):
very invested in this topic and all the research and
the studies and psychology that come along with it, because,
as I said, I'm the eldest daughter, I am one
of three kids. I have two younger sisters with an
age gap of about six and eight years, and as
we have all grown up, it's been so interesting to
see how our dynamic and personalities have been influenced by
(05:43):
like where we were born in, like which order we
were born in, you know, like the middle child of
the youngest child, the oldest child. Particularly how much responsibility
I feel for my sisters I moved out of home
when you know, one of them was ten and one
of them was twelve, like they were still children, And
so it's so interesting that in my mind they still
(06:03):
are those little kids, like running around. I feel such
a sense of protectiveness for them, but I'm also able
to acknowledge the level of permissiveness that they now have
for my parents, how the household rules have really changed,
and also the additional emotional labor that I feel like
(06:24):
I do for the family that quite frankly, I'm happy
to do. But the older I've gotten, the more I've
started to perhaps recognize that maybe my enjoyment of that
has been conditioned rather than like voluntarily chosen. As I've
explored this further and talked to others, it's so fascinating
to see how what I thought was unique to how
(06:44):
I was raised, may actually have been a lot more
based on the fact that I'm not just the eldest
child but also a girl, well a woman now, but
a girl once. Nearly every single one of my female
friends are eldest daughters, maybe because part of our shared
experiences has kind of brought us closer or meant that
(07:07):
our styles and ways of thinking, our values are so
aligned because we know what it's like to have people
relying on us all the time, and we know what
it's like to never really feel appreciated, to feel like
we have to do it all. It's really actually quite
fascinating because in an article published in Scientific America, they
actually concluded that firstborn children are more likely to actually
(07:30):
associate with other firstborn children and like be friends with them.
Middle borns most more likely to be friends with people
who are middle born, and last bones are also more
likely to be friends with last borns. So it's like
it's kind of like we pick our friends based on
where we were born in the family and kind of
the personality traits that we share. Then I started looking
(07:51):
at my past relationships. I saw this pattern of only
ever dating people who are either only children or younger sons.
That's when it got a little bit weird for me,
because I started thinking, like, am I just replicating the
relationship that I had with my siblings by choosing people
that I can almost mother. Someone pointed out to me
(08:14):
that when you've taken on the caregiving, people pleasing role,
the independent role your entire life with your family, you
can't just switch it off when it comes to your relationships.
You repeat the same role you have been taught to
play your entire life, just in a slightly different way.
And one way that shows up in relationships, particularly romantic relationships,
(08:39):
is this concept of the mental load. So the mental
load refers to a lot of that invisible labor that
we often take on of like organizing and planning not
just our lives, but the lives of our partner, you know,
keeping track of where things are in the house, reminding
your partner of appointments or plans, you know, to text
their mom on their birthday, always planning what you're going
(09:01):
to do on the weekend, going on a trip, and
making sure the flight's are booked, that the itinerary is finalized,
the travel insurance is paid for. That is the mental
load and It's more than just emotional and physical labor.
It's this unequal reliance on the cognitive resources, particularly of women,
particularly of eldest daughters in a relationship. I always thought
(09:23):
that I was just a planner. It turns out maybe not.
These are just a few of the ways that I've
seen this syndrome kind of manifest in my social relationships,
but there are so many other areas where we see
consequences and influence on behavior. I mentioned this one before.
I think it's one of the biggest ones, but overachieving
and perfectionist tendencies. I think eldest daughters are second only
(09:46):
to only children in the level of academic pressure that
they endure, but also due to the individual attension that
they receive from their parents before the arrival of their
other siblings. It feels like there is more of a
spotline on them, that they have an example to set.
As we spoke about in our episode on overachievers, when
(10:07):
your worth becomes tied to external praise, to accolades, to accomplishment,
you begin to lose touch with your inherent worth, but
also find it really impossible to slow down or just
take a break without feeling guilty. We start to equate
rest with laziness, even if your parents aren't saying anything anymore,
(10:31):
even if it just becomes self imposed. You're also more
likely to be highly empathetic and sensitive. That's a good one,
but mainly the reason for that is because you see
your role in the family, in any kind of relationship
or group dynamic as keeping people happy. That is your
job to be the mediator, So that requires an additional
(10:54):
level of hypervigilance towards small emotional cues and reactions of
other people. I believe that this also contributes to a
sense of protectiveness that we have when it comes to
our siblings. I'm not a mother, I have never had
a child, but you know that thing that new parents
say when they're like, when my child was born, I realized,
like I could never love anything more, like I would
(11:16):
die for this child. I kind of get that. I
feel that when it comes to my siblings, it's like
this fierce sense or acknowledgment that God forbid your parents
were to pass away, you would be the caregiver. You
are the oldest, you have to take care of the family.
(11:36):
In some way, you have to take care of the
younger kids. I think that's maybe one of the upsides
of being the eldest daughter, not that like impending sense
of doom, but the sense of like protectiveness. But then
also independence and leadership that a lot of eldest daughters have.
It's what makes them like so great in the workplace
(11:57):
and like so great when it comes to leading a
group of people or being a really good friend, is
that they are a natural born leader. That emotional sensitivity, though,
also has its downsides, especially as we are going into
the holiday season. As I'm recording this, I think it
becomes very apparent where this begins to harm us. All
(12:19):
of the family comes together, there's going to be tension
or at least chaos, a lot of chores to be done, cooking, cleaning, shopping, hosting.
The eldest daughter often steps up during this time and
probably experiences the most emotional and mental exhaustion, second only
to their mothers, because that is who they've learnt to
do this from, that is their female role model. Obviously
(12:39):
that's not true in all cases, but think about who
in your family does the most work around the holiday season,
not just physical chores, but who carries the mental load.
I would bet you it's the women and your family,
and I would bet you that you are one of
those women. One person put this so well, it's like
being the eldest daughter is like having an una paid
(13:00):
internship for the rest of your life. This really points
to how the combination of gender and birth order causes
us to take on so much more physical, emotional, mental,
cognitive labor and from a young age. So the younger
that you begin doing that, the younger that you become
the eldest sibling, the eldest daughter, the more of a
(13:21):
lifelong impact that is going to have on you because
you have really, I don't know, not been indoctrinated, but
you've really taken on this role as part of your identity.
It has been part of your reality for a lot longer.
So why does this happen? Why, like, how do we
get here? Why is it that we all share such
(13:43):
a similar experience as the eldest daughter. Well, let's break
it down. I want to start by firstly discussing the
psychology behind birth order. So in the early like nineteen hundreds,
this Austrian psychiatrist called Alfred Adler, who you might remember
from a last week's episode. He came up with the
(14:03):
idea of styles of life and also the inferiority complex.
But he coined birth order theory, and he proposed that
the order in which children are born has a really
profound impact on the individual personalities. So he proposed that
firstborns tend to be really neurotic, so like stressful, stressed,
(14:25):
more like it, quite dutiful, quite independent, quite conservative. Middle
children are competitive, they are rebellious, but there are also
people pleasers, and the youngest sibling tends to be creative,
attention seeking, not very rule following. This has been debated
for many, many years, but with a lot of renewed
(14:46):
focus in the last decade or two. And when you
think about it, obviously where you were born in the
family is going to be important, especially since about eighty
percent of us actually have siblings. That is a big
part of our childhood and our ow upbringing. We spend
so much time with our brothers and sisters. They share
our childhood, like that's kind of the beautiful part of it.
(15:07):
They share our childhood with us. But also they have
a very different relationship to your parents, right like each
of you. I think if you have siblings, notice is
that the level of closeness the level of connection, what
your parents talk to you about, what they trust you with.
It's all very different, very different sometimes. So research does
(15:29):
suggest some pretty strong kind of shifts in the experiences
of firstborns and second borns. So this one researcher from
Penn State who is really like the leader in this
kind of area of psychology, she puts it really well
when she was summarizing her research. Parents tend to be
really focused on getting it right with the first child,
(15:52):
leading them to kind of fixate on their firstborn's development
growing up. They're really fixated on their health, on their grades,
on the friends that they choose, because they're kind of
like the first one out of the gate, right, they
are the first kind of go that they have with
their subsequent children. Though they might be less anxious, they
feel less need to micromanage, and that can lead to
(16:15):
less tension in like the parent child dynamic. Because there's
less of a spotlight on the second, third, fourth child.
They begin to relax maybe now because they have like
a quote unquote backup. I know that sounds terrible, but
they've kind of learned the ropes a little bit and
they realize that they can be a little bit more
hands off, so the way they treat the second, third,
(16:35):
fourth child is different. And in one study you published
in the Journal for Family and Marriage, researchers found that
on average, one way that this shows up is that
parents experience less conflict with their second born than their firstborn.
They seem to be less strict with each child. They
kind of relax the rules. So whilst the firstborn really
(16:57):
had to push up against maybe a strict system, like
a certain level of discipline, as the parents have more children,
they get a lot more relaxed. They have more kids
to focus on. They just don't have the energy to
make sure everyone's following the rules all the time. I
think that that is what contributes to the real sense
(17:18):
of like I need to be perfect, I need to
set the example, but also I have a sense of
responsibility not just to our siblings, but also to our parents.
Right the first child is the only child who gets
to know their parents on a completely solo basis, right
like before the other kids come along, So they're like
(17:40):
the third member in the relationship for a little bit,
and because they're around their parents a lot more for
entertainment and comfort, whereas kids born later on can kind
of turn to their siblings for that. They really get
to know them particularly well, and they're very attuned to
their emotions and their feelings and their behavior. In some cases,
especially if a couple maybe had a child to try
(18:02):
and save their relationship, or they've placed a lot of
their future in this child, or we're seeing some degree
of like emotional stability with our parents, maybe divorce or
financial insecurity. We see a secondary process take place here
called parentification. Parentification involves kind of a role reversal between
(18:24):
parent and child. So the child begins to fulfill the
emotional needs of the parents. The child begins to provide
advice and comfort. They take on a job to help
the family pay the bills. They are assign more household responsibilities.
Their achievements are taken as the parents' achievements, whereas the
parent gets to be a lot more relaxed, gets to
(18:46):
be a lot more like free and emotional and like
a little bit wild. That is what parentification is, and
it occurs a lot when there is like some kind
of disruption in the family and there is an eldest
child who takes on the responsibility. They also try and
shield younger family members from really hard experiences like arguments
or separations, and that is kind of why we see
(19:08):
that level of protectiveness, that level of responsibility form. Additionally,
the eldest child gets all the important information first, right
They often they are raised by the book. They are
taught all the rules, all the chores, the expectations, and
therefore they're responsible for teaching the younger children, leading to
a sense of physical and emotional accountability and responsibility. They're
(19:30):
kind of like the third parent in some ways, which
is why they're often asked to serve as babysitters, as
role models advice givers for their younger siblings. That's that
final element, right, once your eldest child is old enough,
you've got like a free babysitter, like an inbuilt free
babysitter that you don't have to pay someone you can
(19:51):
give your duties as a parent to, even if it's
just temporary. And that is a kind of emotional and
physical labor that is not expected from the younger siblings,
even if it may seem minor, even if it's not
all the time, sometimes the impact is cumulative. We learn
from those moments in which we have been asked to
take on kind of the duties of a third parent,
(20:13):
and they help create our personality, and whilst your siblings
get to be kids, you kind of had to play
caregiver in those moments. So interestingly, one study suggested that
when firstborn's, particularly eldest daughters leave the home, their relationship
with their family actually tends to improve, and the conflict
(20:34):
commonly increases between parents and their younger children because they
have now taken the spot of the eldest child in
the house. The spotlight is now put on them. We
also might kind of see a delayed teenage rebellion for
the eldest child when they move out, when they get
their own place, when they go off to university, where
after years of kind of needing to be perfect, to
(20:56):
be the role model, to do well in school, to
perform a lot of emotion or labor, they suddenly have
all this freedom. They suddenly get to live for themselves
or be their own person, and they go a little
bit wild in response. Now, some of these conclusions apply
to all older children, not disdaughters, but when you combine
(21:18):
birth order with gender, that's when we really start to
see this particular pattern and syndrome emerge. So we are
going to discuss the influence of gender of culture and
also the ways that we can take care of ourselves
as the eldest daughter. After this shortbreak, gender introduces its
(21:44):
own influences to family dynamics. We like, no, we know this.
Women are raised differently to boys. They are treated differently
by society. Even when our parents try their hardest to
make it equal. Sometimes it's unconscious because it's based on
how they were raised, and they may not even realize
or recognize how that might be continuing to promote a
(22:06):
very traditional, outdated role of what women are meant to do.
When we think about the traditional role of women and girls,
their place has been for many many centuries in the home,
performing a lot of that invisible domestic labor. There is
a higher expectation on girls from a young age to
be responsible and sensible even in the school system as well.
(22:30):
Women are also normally what we would call the families keeper,
meaning they perform a lot of that invisible labor of
making sure everybody is happy, that conflicts are resolved and
everybody feels paid attention to. They keep the peace as mediators,
and they also don't call a lot of attention to
themselves and although many cultures are now turning away from
(22:53):
that conventional and unequal treatment of girls and boys, particularly
when it comes to domestic duties, it takes more than
a few generations to eliminate stereotypes that have been attached
to girlhood and womanhood for literally centuries, for millennia, So
there's always going to be some kind of residue that
(23:13):
remains in our unconscious brains that is causing us to
implicitly treat men and women differently. Some people try and
deny that there are still unequal treatment of men and women,
especially when it comes to the home, and as we
see more progressive views towards domestic labor and female empowerment,
we can also recognize that some women you know, want
(23:34):
to do those things. That is totally fine, But according
to the un girls between the ages of five and
fourteen years old so not really at a point where
they can make a conscious and informed decision about how
they want to live their life. They spend forty percent
more time on domestic work than boys the same age,
and on top of that, younger daughters spend more time
(23:55):
on average than young sons doing chores that are consistent
and very timely right, so very intensive chores like keeping
the house organized, cooking dinner every night, doing the cleaning,
driving around siblings, providing almost free therapy to their parents,
their siblings, their relatives. Whereas the jobs and the chores
(24:16):
that are commonly done by boys are like mowing the lawn,
shoveling snow, those are a regular, they're not as urgent,
they're not as consistent. And the final statistic that really
draws at home for me. I'm sure that we're all
kind of convinced at this point, but this one really
made it very apparent to me how like the eldest
daughters and just daughters in general, it's take on so
(24:37):
much of the emotional and physical burden. So in the UK,
almost seventy percent of people who are what we would
call sandwich caregivers, so that means that they are working
and also looking after kids or elderly parents. Seventy percent
of those people are women, seventy percent. So in an
article published by Atlantic this year, they refer to this
(24:58):
like very experience as daughtering. They have a term for it.
It's called daughtering, was coined by Alison Alfred at Baylor University,
and it's basically used to describe the family work that
girls and women tend to take on. That can look
like picking up prescriptions, planning retirement parties, setting money aside
for the parents' future, and it can also involve more
(25:20):
subtler actions like holding your tongue to avoid an argument
or listening to your parents' worries. And this daughtering phenomena
happens for a few reasons, the major one being role
modeling theory, where eldest daughters in particular often imitate how
their mothers display and embodied gender, and also gender schemer theory,
(25:40):
so parents society often assigns different gendered tasks and expectations
to boys and girls. You know, like boys are strong,
girls are sensitive, boys are like really physically active, girls
are creative. Even if it's accidental, unconscious, cultural, it has
an impact on how eldest daughters grow up to see
(26:03):
themselves and how their personalities are often formed around their
duty to others. So we can't really deny that if
you are a daughter and you've been raised with brothers,
for example, you're doing more labor here, like it's just
common sense. Or in the case of like a family
with only daughters, it may be that you begin to
(26:24):
compensate for, like your dad's chores. When we combine birth order,
the fact that parents raise eldest children differently, and then gender,
this very societal, cultural, ingrained belief system almost about how
women should behave that is the space that eldest daughter
syndrome emerges. Sometimes I'm going to acknowledge this now, that
(26:47):
role can be really satisfying. I do. I love to
talk and brag about my sisters because I feel like
a little bit extra proud of them because I was
a little bit extra involved in their lives. It's a
good feeling, right. You can feel a lot closer to
both your parents and your siblings because you're kind of
like you occupy the space in the middle. You have
more of an independent drive, you're more ambitious, you have
(27:08):
more leadership qualities. Those are all great things, but as
we've spoken about, as numerous women have reported, there is
also a burden that is very profound. One of the
most common experiences is feeling like you never had a
chance to fully truly live for yourself because you always
felt an added responsibility lingering in the background. Responsibility to
(27:32):
look after your siblings, to care for your parents, as
they get older, to be a success story and set
an example, to make money, to pave the way, and
all of those things. That results in a lot of
both internal and external pressure that we're facing. Then, of course,
sometimes we also see resentment beginning to bubble up as well,
(27:54):
especially if your younger sibling got away with a lot
more things than you did and were admitted more failures
or screw ups. They got to be a lot more
carefree than you did. They kind of got to have
a childhood, and I know that's really really quite sad,
like they got to be that young, carefree kid without
(28:14):
being forced to grow into like a caregiving or leadership
position really early. Another element is kind of sometimes a
competition that can begin to form between siblings, whereby the
parents may constantly praise the eldest child or the firstborn,
which makes the younger children, often the last born, feel
as if they can never live up to the successes
and achievements and standards of their elder sibling, or that
(28:38):
their parents may even have a favorite. I have heard
so many stories of this resentment really destroying family dynamics
when we allow that bitterness to like simmer and boil
over or Additionally, if our parents have always, you know,
put a lot more energy into the eldest child, that
also creates a sense of like jealousy between the children.
(28:59):
So it's a hard dynamic to navigate from like every
side of the equation, but there are also so many
people doing it successfully. And what I want to focus
on next is how we as the eldest daughters, can
start taking care of ourselves without continuing to buy into
the expectations or need to keep other people happy. Because
(29:20):
when we actually take ourselves off a pedestal, when we
say I don't need to be perfect, I don't always
need to be in control, I don't need to be
this independent, the rest of the family and people around
you also take you off a pedestal. So you're kind
of giving everybody, like doing everybody a favor where you're
evening out the playing field between yourself and your siblings.
(29:41):
But also you're able to have like an actual adult
relationship with your parents when you stop, you know, when
you stop letting them make you into this golden child. Firstly,
we need our families to recognize the unfair burden that
may have been placed on us and redistribute that emotional
physic and mental labor. More equally, part of that is
(30:03):
being vulnerable around what is expected of you and what
you need taken off your plate. For example, if your
mum keeps calling around about your younger siblings even after
you've left the house, try and redirect it and just say, hey,
I think maybe this is something that you can talk
to dad about, not me, or you can talk to
them about it not me. You're not the third parent.
(30:24):
Don't let yourself become the third parent here or a
big one. As the holidays come up. You need to
try and recognize when you are doing things to people
please that you don't actually want to do. Stop volunteering
for tasks that your brother or your dad could do
or another person, or just going along with everyone else's
(30:46):
demands because it's easier for you to organize things than
for other people to take responsibility. For example, if you
have picked everyone up from the airport on all their
separate flights, and then you're having to rush home to
prepare dinner, and then you're also responsible for the family itinerary,
be completely honest and say hey, can someone else take
something off my plate here? Or nominate someone to do
(31:08):
one of your tasks also push back against the gender stereotypes.
There is no reason that your brother can't do the
dishes or that your dad can't like boil water for pasta.
Like they are not incompetent. They are adults, and you
are not their mother. You're their sister, their daughter, even
if you were their mother, still not fair. Part of
(31:29):
breaking down the indoctrinated gender roles that contribute to eldest
daughter syndrome is starting at the heart of the family unit.
And also, don't just feel like you're the only one
who is going to take control here. Like that is
that level of like hyperindependence that we see so commonly
where you just always say yes to things, even when
(31:52):
you have a lot going on, because it's easier than
saying no and having someone else do it wrong or
having someone else screw it up. I know it feels
so awkward and uncomfortable at first because you have been
playing this part for a long time, but I think
that the discomfort will fade when you acknowledge that boundaries
(32:12):
are sometimes at first going to feel hard because they
just don't feel normal quite yet. And it can also
be difficult to start because you realize how much other
people have come to rely on you. But I think
you'll also begin to notice how when you stop doing
all of the additional physical and mental labor, other people
don't want to do it either, because it's tiresome, but
(32:35):
it's less tiresome when it's actually evenly distributed. It's also
important to start speaking your mind, stop biting your tongue
and trying to be the mediator or peacemaker all the time.
If your parent makes a comment you don't like, say something.
If they say something you don't agree with, tell them.
If your sibling keeps asking you to intervene in their
(32:57):
dispute with your mum or your dad, push back, just
say I don't really have an opinion. If someone is
ranting it you and expecting you to just take it,
interrupt them and say, hey, this is really putting me
in a bad mood. I don't have space for this
right now. That is especially the case with your parents.
Right you are still their child. You are not their friend,
you are not their parent, you are not their therapist.
(33:19):
Don't let them parentify you here. It's also important to
encourage balanced conversations that don't fear too severely into blaming
your parents or your siblings, you really want to try
and understand why it might be this way. Like we've
spoken about throughout this episode, all of the contributing factors
(33:40):
and parenting styles and behaviors that lead to eldest daughter syndrome.
They're often very subtle and difficult to recognize in the moment,
and most of the time our parents have learnt them
from their parents, who learnt them from their parents. It's
very generational, So be forgiving here, because when we stoop
(34:02):
to blaming them rather than understanding, that's when riffs form
in families, because your parents will never hear you if
you're just trying to criticize them, right. I know that
you have a lot of anger, you have a lot
of frustration. You don't want to silence yourself, But it's
basically like putting yourself in this position where it's like,
do I want to completely, like damage this relationship and
(34:26):
maybe not damage it, but like definitely hurt it for
a little bit, Or do I want to actually get
something productive out of this, Like do I actually want
to see their behavior change rather than just see an
emotional reaction from them. When we only blame it's you know,
often our parents will never hear that the way that
we want them to hear that, they'll never hear what
(34:47):
we're actually saying, which is I love you so much.
I want our relationship to survive, So please, can we
change this pattern of behavior that is putting me in
this position. All they're going to hear is you're a
bad parent. You're a bad because it's this like cognitive strategy.
We all have to ignore criticism. So I think really
sitting down and being with like, you know, saying to them,
(35:08):
you know, this has been my experience, and I want
to let you know that I value our relationship. But
this needs to change. I can't be this perfect child anymore.
I can't always organize our lives. You cannot turn to
me for emotional support all the time. Maybe you need
a therapist. That's really important. My final tip is to
start living for yourself. I think that that is the
(35:31):
string that is tied together this whole episode. You do
not need to be a child prodigy. You don't need
to be the best all the time. You don't have
to be the third parent. You don't have to be
independent and self reliant and do everything yourself. You don't
always have to be the only one worrying about what
it's going to go wrong. And the way to start
(35:53):
doing this, The way to take that responsibility off your
shoulders is to start asking for and accepting help when
you need it, not just with your family, but with
all the other people in your life. For example, if
someone has offered to cook you dinner or get you dinner,
instead of being like adamant that they shouldn't and being
like no, no, thank you, no thank you, embrace their generosity.
(36:15):
They want to show you that they care. They want
to do something kind for you because you deserve it.
They know how much time and effort you put into others.
You don't always have to be the one serving other people.
Let them do this for you. Accept other people's willingness
to help you. I really struggled with this when I
started dating my boyfriend and he wanted to like pay
(36:37):
for meals and like do things for me. I was like,
this is really I'm so used to being this like
hyper independent person who takes care of everyone else. Like
what is going on? And then recently a friend of
mine like stayed at my house and did all the
dishes and like offered to like do my laundry, and
it felt so odd to have someone do for me
what I always felt like I needed to either do
(36:58):
for myself or do for other people. But I want
you to swallow that initial instinctual gut feeling to be
in control, to be self reliant, and realize that if
someone didn't want to do something for you, they wouldn't offer.
They want to show you that. They want to show you,
I guess the love that you always give to others,
similar to this fight back against your chronic independence. If
(37:20):
you are struggling at work or UNI, it's okay to
reach out for help right or even support. It doesn't
make you a failure for needing assistance. That's just your
eldest daughter instincts stepping in trying its hardest to like
make you always be the best and self reliant. It's
like okay to not be the best and everything. It's
(37:41):
the It's okay to ask for help the way that
other people ask you for help, right. It actually shows
really great strength. And I think finally it's okay to
do things for yourself and with yourself, even if it
means disappointing others or saying no, whether that is your hobbies,
or taking a day to just like not interact with anyone,
or not going to that big family gathering because you're
(38:02):
just really tired, not taking on that extra responsibility. That
is okay, that is totally okay. Just say I'm not
going that you're not selfish. You do not need to
feel shame for prioritizing yourself whilst everyone else is doing
the exact same thing by relying on you like that
is they are getting the rest by putting all the
burden on you. And I think that we really begin
(38:26):
to recognize eldest daughter syndrome when we just cannot take
that burden anymore, when we are so mentally and emotionally exhausted.
I think you'll find yourself feeling so free in those moments.
You won't feel contained anymore, You'll feel less burnt out
when you give up that control and with that responsibility.
(38:46):
And I'm not saying that it's going to happen instantly,
because if you have been the eldest daughter for a
long time, you have been very much like this is
your identity, So it's going to be really hard to
give up. But maybe just start by giving up the
things that you really don't have space for anymore. You
really don't have the space to just like always be
on your own and to never trust others. You don't
(39:07):
have the space to always be organizing everything like. This
was one of the things I really noticed about myself
as the eldest daughter was I just got sick of
always being the friend who had to make plans with everybody,
Like it was so tiring to be the one who
everyone was always like, what are you doing this weekend?
What are we doing this weekend? Can you book this?
Like you know, it was really tiring, And I gave
that up because I was like, I can't keep doing this.
(39:29):
And people respond to the kind of to your absence,
into the kind of hole that you leave when you
no longer do their mental labor for them. I think
being the eldest daughter is such an emotional mindfield at times.
I really do get it. You also feel that sense
of responsibility for your younger siblings, like I said before,
like you implicitly know that if anything was to happen
(39:50):
to your parents, you would be the one in charge,
Like you're the one who's gonna have to step up there.
So even if you don't think about it, often there
is always that implied sense of like I need to
make sure these kids are all right, like I need
to protect them. And sometimes you just want to break.
You want to break from all that responsibility. And you
know you can't change how you were raised or your
(40:12):
birth order, but you can begin to unlearn and heal
the parts of you that feel the need to carry
the burden of everyone else while still being perfect, Like
you can't do everything all the time. So let yourself
be a child again. Let yourself receive love rather than
always having to give it out like you really you
deserve that, you deserve to heal, You deserve to be
(40:33):
a happy eldest daughter. So I really hope that you
enjoyed this episode. I hope that you learnt something from
this episode. As an eldest child, I totally get it.
I feel like this was I was writing this episode
just being like, yep, yep, that makes sense, that makes sense.
Tick that off the list, like totally aligns with my experience.
And I hope that maybe that was the case for
(40:55):
you as well, where you felt heard, you felt seen
by this research by some of these personal experience answers,
and also thinking about ways to not just go into
the holiday season, but into every season in a healthier,
healed way where you're not always taking on this role
in the family. You're allowed to be more yourself and
take on an identity that is more aligned with who
(41:17):
you actually are. So thank you so much for listening
to this episode. If you enjoyed it, if you think
someone else needs to hear this, make sure you share
a link with them and leave a five star review.
This is like our last solo episode of the year.
I just realized that last solo episode this year. We're
doing twelve days of guests in December, so for the
(41:40):
rest of the month, for the rest of the year,
we will just be doing guest episodes. I've been working
so hard on finding some amazing people to come on,
and every single conversation is just like so wise, so
mind blowing, so like just targeted and interesting and fascinating.
So I cannot wait for you guys to hear all
(42:00):
of those episodes. Make sure you're following so that you
get alerted when they start to come out. And if
you have an episode suggestion, please feel free to dm
me at that psychology podcast on Instagram. This is where
this episode came from like. I talked about it very
briefly in the Overachieving episode, and the amount of you
that said I want to hear about the eldest daughter
was insane, so thanks for your suggestion. I really hope
(42:24):
that you enjoyed this episode, and we will be back
at the end of this week with another one.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we break
down the psychology of our twenties. I want to start
out by asking you a few questions. Do you ever
feel like you need to be perfect, that you are
(00:49):
responsible for the emotions of others. You are the organizer
of the friendship group, highly self reliant, an overachiever, constantly
aid anxious about the future, thinking about whether your siblings
and your parents are going to be okay. Do you
feel like you grew up too quickly, almost like you're
(01:10):
asleep for a huge chunk of your childhood and just
never got to experience it, cannot remember it at all.
I would make a good guess that if you answered
yes to all of those questions, you are the eldest daughter,
and you might be experiencing what has been coined as
eldest daughter syndrome. That is exactly what we are going
(01:34):
to be discussing in today's episode. This was so highly
requested after the episode we did on the Curse of
Being an Overachiever, where we spoke about this very briefly.
But if you haven't listened to that episode, make sure
you add it to your queue because it's kind of
like a sister episode in some way. It will answer
(01:54):
a lot more questions for you. But today we are
specifically just talking about the eldest daughter. So the eldest
daughter in a family often faces a very unique set
of experiences and I would say responsibilities due to kind
of the parallel influence of birth order, age, and then
(02:17):
gender as well. The pressure and the expectations associated with
these characteristics cause eldest daughters to develop very specific certain
personality traits or even mental health challenges as well. Because
they have been required to grow up a lot quicker,
be a role model or even a caregiver to their
young younger siblings, and also live up simultaneously to the
(02:42):
very high expectations of their parents. Eldest daughters often fit
a certain profile in that way, a certain personality profile.
They're often very self reliant, and independent. They find it
hard to trust other people with tasks that need to
be done because that would require them to give up
a sense of control. They often feel accountable for the
(03:06):
families happiness, future well being. They're complimented on being mature
for their age. They are labeled as an overachiever or
my favorite term, a gifted child. I despise that term
from a young age, and there's a lot of pressure,
(03:27):
either explicit or implicit, that has put on them to
get perfect grades and to really excel at their careers.
They have a lot of people pleasing tendencies, They are
afraid to say no, to let people down. And then
of course we have like the age old stereotype of
eldest daughters being very bossy and domineering, which if I'm
(03:47):
being honest, I tend to agree with. As the eldest child.
There are thousands, I would say, if not millions and
possibly billions, Let's stick with millions millions of eldest daughters
out there who can relate to these quote unquote symptoms
and the experiences of elder's daughter syndrome. We are seeing
(04:09):
viral tiktoks of people kind of describing the stress of
the excess of emotional and physical labor that we take on.
But most importantly, at the core of this experience, the
impression that we aren't being cared for the way that
we care for others. That is so critical, and I
think that is such a source of pain for eldest
(04:30):
daughters in particular. And when we see that many people,
I think talking about a unique experience of a certain
type of person in society. I think it's something that
we need to pay attention to and explore because there
is so much surprising psychology that comes with holding this
position and this role in the family, and I think
a lot of unexpected, sometimes long term consequences that linger
(04:53):
with us into adulthood, impacting things like how we view
our academics or work, or career success or romantic relationships,
even what happiness actually looks like for us. So there
are theories around birth order, around parentification, early twenties, rebellion,
gender theory, so much to cover. And I feel personally
(05:18):
very invested in this topic and all the research and
the studies and psychology that come along with it, because,
as I said, I'm the eldest daughter, I am one
of three kids. I have two younger sisters with an
age gap of about six and eight years, and as
we have all grown up, it's been so interesting to
see how our dynamic and personalities have been influenced by
(05:43):
like where we were born in, like which order we
were born in, you know, like the middle child of
the youngest child, the oldest child. Particularly how much responsibility
I feel for my sisters I moved out of home
when you know, one of them was ten and one
of them was twelve, like they were still children, And
so it's so interesting that in my mind they still
(06:03):
are those little kids, like running around. I feel such
a sense of protectiveness for them, but I'm also able
to acknowledge the level of permissiveness that they now have
for my parents, how the household rules have really changed,
and also the additional emotional labor that I feel like
(06:24):
I do for the family that quite frankly, I'm happy
to do. But the older I've gotten, the more I've
started to perhaps recognize that maybe my enjoyment of that
has been conditioned rather than like voluntarily chosen. As I've
explored this further and talked to others, it's so fascinating
to see how what I thought was unique to how
(06:44):
I was raised, may actually have been a lot more
based on the fact that I'm not just the eldest
child but also a girl, well a woman now, but
a girl once. Nearly every single one of my female
friends are eldest daughters, maybe because part of our shared
experiences has kind of brought us closer or meant that
(07:07):
our styles and ways of thinking, our values are so
aligned because we know what it's like to have people
relying on us all the time, and we know what
it's like to never really feel appreciated, to feel like
we have to do it all. It's really actually quite
fascinating because in an article published in Scientific America, they
actually concluded that firstborn children are more likely to actually
(07:30):
associate with other firstborn children and like be friends with them.
Middle borns most more likely to be friends with people
who are middle born, and last bones are also more
likely to be friends with last borns. So it's like
it's kind of like we pick our friends based on
where we were born in the family and kind of
the personality traits that we share. Then I started looking
(07:51):
at my past relationships. I saw this pattern of only
ever dating people who are either only children or younger sons.
That's when it got a little bit weird for me,
because I started thinking, like, am I just replicating the
relationship that I had with my siblings by choosing people
that I can almost mother. Someone pointed out to me
(08:14):
that when you've taken on the caregiving, people pleasing role,
the independent role your entire life with your family, you
can't just switch it off when it comes to your relationships.
You repeat the same role you have been taught to
play your entire life, just in a slightly different way.
And one way that shows up in relationships, particularly romantic relationships,
(08:39):
is this concept of the mental load. So the mental
load refers to a lot of that invisible labor that
we often take on of like organizing and planning not
just our lives, but the lives of our partner, you know,
keeping track of where things are in the house, reminding
your partner of appointments or plans, you know, to text
their mom on their birthday, always planning what you're going
(09:01):
to do on the weekend, going on a trip, and
making sure the flight's are booked, that the itinerary is finalized,
the travel insurance is paid for. That is the mental
load and It's more than just emotional and physical labor.
It's this unequal reliance on the cognitive resources, particularly of women,
particularly of eldest daughters in a relationship. I always thought
(09:23):
that I was just a planner. It turns out maybe not.
These are just a few of the ways that I've
seen this syndrome kind of manifest in my social relationships,
but there are so many other areas where we see
consequences and influence on behavior. I mentioned this one before.
I think it's one of the biggest ones, but overachieving
and perfectionist tendencies. I think eldest daughters are second only
(09:46):
to only children in the level of academic pressure that
they endure, but also due to the individual attension that
they receive from their parents before the arrival of their
other siblings. It feels like there is more of a
spotline on them, that they have an example to set.
As we spoke about in our episode on overachievers, when
(10:07):
your worth becomes tied to external praise, to accolades, to accomplishment,
you begin to lose touch with your inherent worth, but
also find it really impossible to slow down or just
take a break without feeling guilty. We start to equate
rest with laziness, even if your parents aren't saying anything anymore,
(10:31):
even if it just becomes self imposed. You're also more
likely to be highly empathetic and sensitive. That's a good one,
but mainly the reason for that is because you see
your role in the family, in any kind of relationship
or group dynamic as keeping people happy. That is your
job to be the mediator, So that requires an additional
(10:54):
level of hypervigilance towards small emotional cues and reactions of
other people. I believe that this also contributes to a
sense of protectiveness that we have when it comes to
our siblings. I'm not a mother, I have never had
a child, but you know that thing that new parents
say when they're like, when my child was born, I realized,
like I could never love anything more, like I would
(11:16):
die for this child. I kind of get that. I
feel that when it comes to my siblings, it's like
this fierce sense or acknowledgment that God forbid your parents
were to pass away, you would be the caregiver. You
are the oldest, you have to take care of the family.
(11:36):
In some way, you have to take care of the
younger kids. I think that's maybe one of the upsides
of being the eldest daughter, not that like impending sense
of doom, but the sense of like protectiveness. But then
also independence and leadership that a lot of eldest daughters have.
It's what makes them like so great in the workplace
(11:57):
and like so great when it comes to leading a
group of people or being a really good friend, is
that they are a natural born leader. That emotional sensitivity, though,
also has its downsides, especially as we are going into
the holiday season. As I'm recording this, I think it
becomes very apparent where this begins to harm us. All
(12:19):
of the family comes together, there's going to be tension
or at least chaos, a lot of chores to be done, cooking, cleaning, shopping, hosting.
The eldest daughter often steps up during this time and
probably experiences the most emotional and mental exhaustion, second only
to their mothers, because that is who they've learnt to
do this from, that is their female role model. Obviously
(12:39):
that's not true in all cases, but think about who
in your family does the most work around the holiday season,
not just physical chores, but who carries the mental load.
I would bet you it's the women and your family,
and I would bet you that you are one of
those women. One person put this so well, it's like
being the eldest daughter is like having an una paid
(13:00):
internship for the rest of your life. This really points
to how the combination of gender and birth order causes
us to take on so much more physical, emotional, mental,
cognitive labor and from a young age. So the younger
that you begin doing that, the younger that you become
the eldest sibling, the eldest daughter, the more of a
(13:21):
lifelong impact that is going to have on you because
you have really, I don't know, not been indoctrinated, but
you've really taken on this role as part of your identity.
It has been part of your reality for a lot longer.
So why does this happen? Why, like, how do we
get here? Why is it that we all share such
(13:43):
a similar experience as the eldest daughter. Well, let's break
it down. I want to start by firstly discussing the
psychology behind birth order. So in the early like nineteen hundreds,
this Austrian psychiatrist called Alfred Adler, who you might remember
from a last week's episode. He came up with the
(14:03):
idea of styles of life and also the inferiority complex.
But he coined birth order theory, and he proposed that
the order in which children are born has a really
profound impact on the individual personalities. So he proposed that
firstborns tend to be really neurotic, so like stressful, stressed,
(14:25):
more like it, quite dutiful, quite independent, quite conservative. Middle
children are competitive, they are rebellious, but there are also
people pleasers, and the youngest sibling tends to be creative,
attention seeking, not very rule following. This has been debated
for many, many years, but with a lot of renewed
(14:46):
focus in the last decade or two. And when you
think about it, obviously where you were born in the
family is going to be important, especially since about eighty
percent of us actually have siblings. That is a big
part of our childhood and our ow upbringing. We spend
so much time with our brothers and sisters. They share
our childhood, like that's kind of the beautiful part of it.
(15:07):
They share our childhood with us. But also they have
a very different relationship to your parents, right like each
of you. I think if you have siblings, notice is
that the level of closeness the level of connection, what
your parents talk to you about, what they trust you with.
It's all very different, very different sometimes. So research does
(15:29):
suggest some pretty strong kind of shifts in the experiences
of firstborns and second borns. So this one researcher from
Penn State who is really like the leader in this
kind of area of psychology, she puts it really well
when she was summarizing her research. Parents tend to be
really focused on getting it right with the first child,
(15:52):
leading them to kind of fixate on their firstborn's development
growing up. They're really fixated on their health, on their grades,
on the friends that they choose, because they're kind of
like the first one out of the gate, right, they
are the first kind of go that they have with
their subsequent children. Though they might be less anxious, they
feel less need to micromanage, and that can lead to
(16:15):
less tension in like the parent child dynamic. Because there's
less of a spotlight on the second, third, fourth child.
They begin to relax maybe now because they have like
a quote unquote backup. I know that sounds terrible, but
they've kind of learned the ropes a little bit and
they realize that they can be a little bit more
hands off, so the way they treat the second, third,
(16:35):
fourth child is different. And in one study you published
in the Journal for Family and Marriage, researchers found that
on average, one way that this shows up is that
parents experience less conflict with their second born than their firstborn.
They seem to be less strict with each child. They
kind of relax the rules. So whilst the firstborn really
(16:57):
had to push up against maybe a strict system, like
a certain level of discipline, as the parents have more children,
they get a lot more relaxed. They have more kids
to focus on. They just don't have the energy to
make sure everyone's following the rules all the time. I
think that that is what contributes to the real sense
(17:18):
of like I need to be perfect, I need to
set the example, but also I have a sense of
responsibility not just to our siblings, but also to our parents.
Right the first child is the only child who gets
to know their parents on a completely solo basis, right
like before the other kids come along, So they're like
(17:40):
the third member in the relationship for a little bit,
and because they're around their parents a lot more for
entertainment and comfort, whereas kids born later on can kind
of turn to their siblings for that. They really get
to know them particularly well, and they're very attuned to
their emotions and their feelings and their behavior. In some cases,
especially if a couple maybe had a child to try
(18:02):
and save their relationship, or they've placed a lot of
their future in this child, or we're seeing some degree
of like emotional stability with our parents, maybe divorce or
financial insecurity. We see a secondary process take place here
called parentification. Parentification involves kind of a role reversal between
(18:24):
parent and child. So the child begins to fulfill the
emotional needs of the parents. The child begins to provide
advice and comfort. They take on a job to help
the family pay the bills. They are assign more household responsibilities.
Their achievements are taken as the parents' achievements, whereas the
parent gets to be a lot more relaxed, gets to
(18:46):
be a lot more like free and emotional and like
a little bit wild. That is what parentification is, and
it occurs a lot when there is like some kind
of disruption in the family and there is an eldest
child who takes on the responsibility. They also try and
shield younger family members from really hard experiences like arguments
or separations, and that is kind of why we see
(19:08):
that level of protectiveness, that level of responsibility form. Additionally,
the eldest child gets all the important information first, right
They often they are raised by the book. They are
taught all the rules, all the chores, the expectations, and
therefore they're responsible for teaching the younger children, leading to
a sense of physical and emotional accountability and responsibility. They're
(19:30):
kind of like the third parent in some ways, which
is why they're often asked to serve as babysitters, as
role models advice givers for their younger siblings. That's that
final element, right, once your eldest child is old enough,
you've got like a free babysitter, like an inbuilt free
babysitter that you don't have to pay someone you can
(19:51):
give your duties as a parent to, even if it's
just temporary. And that is a kind of emotional and
physical labor that is not expected from the younger siblings,
even if it may seem minor, even if it's not
all the time, sometimes the impact is cumulative. We learn
from those moments in which we have been asked to
take on kind of the duties of a third parent,
(20:13):
and they help create our personality, and whilst your siblings
get to be kids, you kind of had to play
caregiver in those moments. So interestingly, one study suggested that
when firstborn's, particularly eldest daughters leave the home, their relationship
with their family actually tends to improve, and the conflict
(20:34):
commonly increases between parents and their younger children because they
have now taken the spot of the eldest child in
the house. The spotlight is now put on them. We
also might kind of see a delayed teenage rebellion for
the eldest child when they move out, when they get
their own place, when they go off to university, where
after years of kind of needing to be perfect, to
(20:56):
be the role model, to do well in school, to
perform a lot of emotion or labor, they suddenly have
all this freedom. They suddenly get to live for themselves
or be their own person, and they go a little
bit wild in response. Now, some of these conclusions apply
to all older children, not disdaughters, but when you combine
(21:18):
birth order with gender, that's when we really start to
see this particular pattern and syndrome emerge. So we are
going to discuss the influence of gender of culture and
also the ways that we can take care of ourselves
as the eldest daughter. After this shortbreak, gender introduces its
(21:44):
own influences to family dynamics. We like, no, we know this.
Women are raised differently to boys. They are treated differently
by society. Even when our parents try their hardest to
make it equal. Sometimes it's unconscious because it's based on
how they were raised, and they may not even realize
or recognize how that might be continuing to promote a
(22:06):
very traditional, outdated role of what women are meant to do.
When we think about the traditional role of women and girls,
their place has been for many many centuries in the home,
performing a lot of that invisible domestic labor. There is
a higher expectation on girls from a young age to
be responsible and sensible even in the school system as well.
(22:30):
Women are also normally what we would call the families keeper,
meaning they perform a lot of that invisible labor of
making sure everybody is happy, that conflicts are resolved and
everybody feels paid attention to. They keep the peace as mediators,
and they also don't call a lot of attention to
themselves and although many cultures are now turning away from
(22:53):
that conventional and unequal treatment of girls and boys, particularly
when it comes to domestic duties, it takes more than
a few generations to eliminate stereotypes that have been attached
to girlhood and womanhood for literally centuries, for millennia, So
there's always going to be some kind of residue that
(23:13):
remains in our unconscious brains that is causing us to
implicitly treat men and women differently. Some people try and
deny that there are still unequal treatment of men and women,
especially when it comes to the home, and as we
see more progressive views towards domestic labor and female empowerment,
we can also recognize that some women you know, want
(23:34):
to do those things. That is totally fine, But according
to the un girls between the ages of five and
fourteen years old so not really at a point where
they can make a conscious and informed decision about how
they want to live their life. They spend forty percent
more time on domestic work than boys the same age,
and on top of that, younger daughters spend more time
(23:55):
on average than young sons doing chores that are consistent
and very timely right, so very intensive chores like keeping
the house organized, cooking dinner every night, doing the cleaning,
driving around siblings, providing almost free therapy to their parents,
their siblings, their relatives. Whereas the jobs and the chores
(24:16):
that are commonly done by boys are like mowing the lawn,
shoveling snow, those are a regular, they're not as urgent,
they're not as consistent. And the final statistic that really
draws at home for me. I'm sure that we're all
kind of convinced at this point, but this one really
made it very apparent to me how like the eldest
daughters and just daughters in general, it's take on so
(24:37):
much of the emotional and physical burden. So in the UK,
almost seventy percent of people who are what we would
call sandwich caregivers, so that means that they are working
and also looking after kids or elderly parents. Seventy percent
of those people are women, seventy percent. So in an
article published by Atlantic this year, they refer to this
(24:58):
like very experience as daughtering. They have a term for it.
It's called daughtering, was coined by Alison Alfred at Baylor University,
and it's basically used to describe the family work that
girls and women tend to take on. That can look
like picking up prescriptions, planning retirement parties, setting money aside
for the parents' future, and it can also involve more
(25:20):
subtler actions like holding your tongue to avoid an argument
or listening to your parents' worries. And this daughtering phenomena
happens for a few reasons, the major one being role
modeling theory, where eldest daughters in particular often imitate how
their mothers display and embodied gender, and also gender schemer theory,
(25:40):
so parents society often assigns different gendered tasks and expectations
to boys and girls. You know, like boys are strong,
girls are sensitive, boys are like really physically active, girls
are creative. Even if it's accidental, unconscious, cultural, it has
an impact on how eldest daughters grow up to see
(26:03):
themselves and how their personalities are often formed around their
duty to others. So we can't really deny that if
you are a daughter and you've been raised with brothers,
for example, you're doing more labor here, like it's just
common sense. Or in the case of like a family
with only daughters, it may be that you begin to
(26:24):
compensate for, like your dad's chores. When we combine birth order,
the fact that parents raise eldest children differently, and then gender,
this very societal, cultural, ingrained belief system almost about how
women should behave that is the space that eldest daughter
syndrome emerges. Sometimes I'm going to acknowledge this now, that
(26:47):
role can be really satisfying. I do. I love to
talk and brag about my sisters because I feel like
a little bit extra proud of them because I was
a little bit extra involved in their lives. It's a
good feeling, right. You can feel a lot closer to
both your parents and your siblings because you're kind of
like you occupy the space in the middle. You have
more of an independent drive, you're more ambitious, you have
(27:08):
more leadership qualities. Those are all great things, but as
we've spoken about, as numerous women have reported, there is
also a burden that is very profound. One of the
most common experiences is feeling like you never had a
chance to fully truly live for yourself because you always
felt an added responsibility lingering in the background. Responsibility to
(27:32):
look after your siblings, to care for your parents, as
they get older, to be a success story and set
an example, to make money, to pave the way, and
all of those things. That results in a lot of
both internal and external pressure that we're facing. Then, of course,
sometimes we also see resentment beginning to bubble up as well,
(27:54):
especially if your younger sibling got away with a lot
more things than you did and were admitted more failures
or screw ups. They got to be a lot more
carefree than you did. They kind of got to have
a childhood, and I know that's really really quite sad,
like they got to be that young, carefree kid without
(28:14):
being forced to grow into like a caregiving or leadership
position really early. Another element is kind of sometimes a
competition that can begin to form between siblings, whereby the
parents may constantly praise the eldest child or the firstborn,
which makes the younger children, often the last born, feel
as if they can never live up to the successes
and achievements and standards of their elder sibling, or that
(28:38):
their parents may even have a favorite. I have heard
so many stories of this resentment really destroying family dynamics
when we allow that bitterness to like simmer and boil
over or Additionally, if our parents have always, you know,
put a lot more energy into the eldest child, that
also creates a sense of like jealousy between the children.
(28:59):
So it's a hard dynamic to navigate from like every
side of the equation, but there are also so many
people doing it successfully. And what I want to focus
on next is how we as the eldest daughters, can
start taking care of ourselves without continuing to buy into
the expectations or need to keep other people happy. Because
(29:20):
when we actually take ourselves off a pedestal, when we
say I don't need to be perfect, I don't always
need to be in control, I don't need to be
this independent, the rest of the family and people around
you also take you off a pedestal. So you're kind
of giving everybody, like doing everybody a favor where you're
evening out the playing field between yourself and your siblings.
(29:41):
But also you're able to have like an actual adult
relationship with your parents when you stop, you know, when
you stop letting them make you into this golden child. Firstly,
we need our families to recognize the unfair burden that
may have been placed on us and redistribute that emotional
physic and mental labor. More equally, part of that is
(30:03):
being vulnerable around what is expected of you and what
you need taken off your plate. For example, if your
mum keeps calling around about your younger siblings even after
you've left the house, try and redirect it and just say, hey,
I think maybe this is something that you can talk
to dad about, not me, or you can talk to
them about it not me. You're not the third parent.
(30:24):
Don't let yourself become the third parent here or a
big one. As the holidays come up. You need to
try and recognize when you are doing things to people
please that you don't actually want to do. Stop volunteering
for tasks that your brother or your dad could do
or another person, or just going along with everyone else's
(30:46):
demands because it's easier for you to organize things than
for other people to take responsibility. For example, if you
have picked everyone up from the airport on all their
separate flights, and then you're having to rush home to
prepare dinner, and then you're also responsible for the family itinerary,
be completely honest and say hey, can someone else take
something off my plate here? Or nominate someone to do
(31:08):
one of your tasks also push back against the gender stereotypes.
There is no reason that your brother can't do the
dishes or that your dad can't like boil water for pasta.
Like they are not incompetent. They are adults, and you
are not their mother. You're their sister, their daughter, even
if you were their mother, still not fair. Part of
(31:29):
breaking down the indoctrinated gender roles that contribute to eldest
daughter syndrome is starting at the heart of the family unit.
And also, don't just feel like you're the only one
who is going to take control here. Like that is
that level of like hyperindependence that we see so commonly
where you just always say yes to things, even when
(31:52):
you have a lot going on, because it's easier than
saying no and having someone else do it wrong or
having someone else screw it up. I know it feels
so awkward and uncomfortable at first because you have been
playing this part for a long time, but I think
that the discomfort will fade when you acknowledge that boundaries
(32:12):
are sometimes at first going to feel hard because they
just don't feel normal quite yet. And it can also
be difficult to start because you realize how much other
people have come to rely on you. But I think
you'll also begin to notice how when you stop doing
all of the additional physical and mental labor, other people
don't want to do it either, because it's tiresome, but
(32:35):
it's less tiresome when it's actually evenly distributed. It's also
important to start speaking your mind, stop biting your tongue
and trying to be the mediator or peacemaker all the time.
If your parent makes a comment you don't like, say something.
If they say something you don't agree with, tell them.
If your sibling keeps asking you to intervene in their
(32:57):
dispute with your mum or your dad, push back, just
say I don't really have an opinion. If someone is
ranting it you and expecting you to just take it,
interrupt them and say, hey, this is really putting me
in a bad mood. I don't have space for this
right now. That is especially the case with your parents.
Right you are still their child. You are not their friend,
you are not their parent, you are not their therapist.
(33:19):
Don't let them parentify you here. It's also important to
encourage balanced conversations that don't fear too severely into blaming
your parents or your siblings, you really want to try
and understand why it might be this way. Like we've
spoken about throughout this episode, all of the contributing factors
(33:40):
and parenting styles and behaviors that lead to eldest daughter syndrome.
They're often very subtle and difficult to recognize in the moment,
and most of the time our parents have learnt them
from their parents, who learnt them from their parents. It's
very generational, So be forgiving here, because when we stoop
(34:02):
to blaming them rather than understanding, that's when riffs form
in families, because your parents will never hear you if
you're just trying to criticize them, right. I know that
you have a lot of anger, you have a lot
of frustration. You don't want to silence yourself, But it's
basically like putting yourself in this position where it's like,
do I want to completely, like damage this relationship and
(34:26):
maybe not damage it, but like definitely hurt it for
a little bit, Or do I want to actually get
something productive out of this, Like do I actually want
to see their behavior change rather than just see an
emotional reaction from them. When we only blame it's you know,
often our parents will never hear that the way that
we want them to hear that, they'll never hear what
(34:47):
we're actually saying, which is I love you so much.
I want our relationship to survive, So please, can we
change this pattern of behavior that is putting me in
this position. All they're going to hear is you're a
bad parent. You're a bad because it's this like cognitive strategy.
We all have to ignore criticism. So I think really
sitting down and being with like, you know, saying to them,
(35:08):
you know, this has been my experience, and I want
to let you know that I value our relationship. But
this needs to change. I can't be this perfect child anymore.
I can't always organize our lives. You cannot turn to
me for emotional support all the time. Maybe you need
a therapist. That's really important. My final tip is to
start living for yourself. I think that that is the
(35:31):
string that is tied together this whole episode. You do
not need to be a child prodigy. You don't need
to be the best all the time. You don't have
to be the third parent. You don't have to be
independent and self reliant and do everything yourself. You don't
always have to be the only one worrying about what
it's going to go wrong. And the way to start
(35:53):
doing this, The way to take that responsibility off your
shoulders is to start asking for and accepting help when
you need it, not just with your family, but with
all the other people in your life. For example, if
someone has offered to cook you dinner or get you dinner,
instead of being like adamant that they shouldn't and being
like no, no, thank you, no thank you, embrace their generosity.
(36:15):
They want to show you that they care. They want
to do something kind for you because you deserve it.
They know how much time and effort you put into others.
You don't always have to be the one serving other people.
Let them do this for you. Accept other people's willingness
to help you. I really struggled with this when I
started dating my boyfriend and he wanted to like pay
(36:37):
for meals and like do things for me. I was like,
this is really I'm so used to being this like
hyper independent person who takes care of everyone else. Like
what is going on? And then recently a friend of
mine like stayed at my house and did all the
dishes and like offered to like do my laundry, and
it felt so odd to have someone do for me
what I always felt like I needed to either do
(36:58):
for myself or do for other people. But I want
you to swallow that initial instinctual gut feeling to be
in control, to be self reliant, and realize that if
someone didn't want to do something for you, they wouldn't offer.
They want to show you that. They want to show you,
I guess the love that you always give to others,
similar to this fight back against your chronic independence. If
(37:20):
you are struggling at work or UNI, it's okay to
reach out for help right or even support. It doesn't
make you a failure for needing assistance. That's just your
eldest daughter instincts stepping in trying its hardest to like
make you always be the best and self reliant. It's
like okay to not be the best and everything. It's
(37:41):
the It's okay to ask for help the way that
other people ask you for help, right. It actually shows
really great strength. And I think finally it's okay to
do things for yourself and with yourself, even if it
means disappointing others or saying no, whether that is your hobbies,
or taking a day to just like not interact with anyone,
or not going to that big family gathering because you're
(38:02):
just really tired, not taking on that extra responsibility. That
is okay, that is totally okay. Just say I'm not
going that you're not selfish. You do not need to
feel shame for prioritizing yourself whilst everyone else is doing
the exact same thing by relying on you like that
is they are getting the rest by putting all the
burden on you. And I think that we really begin
(38:26):
to recognize eldest daughter syndrome when we just cannot take
that burden anymore, when we are so mentally and emotionally exhausted.
I think you'll find yourself feeling so free in those moments.
You won't feel contained anymore, You'll feel less burnt out
when you give up that control and with that responsibility.
(38:46):
And I'm not saying that it's going to happen instantly,
because if you have been the eldest daughter for a
long time, you have been very much like this is
your identity, So it's going to be really hard to
give up. But maybe just start by giving up the
things that you really don't have space for anymore. You
really don't have the space to just like always be
on your own and to never trust others. You don't
(39:07):
have the space to always be organizing everything like. This
was one of the things I really noticed about myself
as the eldest daughter was I just got sick of
always being the friend who had to make plans with everybody,
Like it was so tiring to be the one who
everyone was always like, what are you doing this weekend?
What are we doing this weekend? Can you book this?
Like you know, it was really tiring, And I gave
that up because I was like, I can't keep doing this.
(39:29):
And people respond to the kind of to your absence,
into the kind of hole that you leave when you
no longer do their mental labor for them. I think
being the eldest daughter is such an emotional mindfield at times.
I really do get it. You also feel that sense
of responsibility for your younger siblings, like I said before,
like you implicitly know that if anything was to happen
(39:50):
to your parents, you would be the one in charge,
Like you're the one who's gonna have to step up there.
So even if you don't think about it, often there
is always that implied sense of like I need to
make sure these kids are all right, like I need
to protect them. And sometimes you just want to break.
You want to break from all that responsibility. And you
know you can't change how you were raised or your
(40:12):
birth order, but you can begin to unlearn and heal
the parts of you that feel the need to carry
the burden of everyone else while still being perfect, Like
you can't do everything all the time. So let yourself
be a child again. Let yourself receive love rather than
always having to give it out like you really you
deserve that, you deserve to heal, You deserve to be
(40:33):
a happy eldest daughter. So I really hope that you
enjoyed this episode. I hope that you learnt something from
this episode. As an eldest child, I totally get it.
I feel like this was I was writing this episode
just being like, yep, yep, that makes sense, that makes sense.
Tick that off the list, like totally aligns with my experience.
And I hope that maybe that was the case for
(40:55):
you as well, where you felt heard, you felt seen
by this research by some of these personal experience answers,
and also thinking about ways to not just go into
the holiday season, but into every season in a healthier,
healed way where you're not always taking on this role
in the family. You're allowed to be more yourself and
take on an identity that is more aligned with who
(41:17):
you actually are. So thank you so much for listening
to this episode. If you enjoyed it, if you think
someone else needs to hear this, make sure you share
a link with them and leave a five star review.
This is like our last solo episode of the year.
I just realized that last solo episode this year. We're
doing twelve days of guests in December, so for the
(41:40):
rest of the month, for the rest of the year,
we will just be doing guest episodes. I've been working
so hard on finding some amazing people to come on,
and every single conversation is just like so wise, so
mind blowing, so like just targeted and interesting and fascinating.
So I cannot wait for you guys to hear all
(42:00):
of those episodes. Make sure you're following so that you
get alerted when they start to come out. And if
you have an episode suggestion, please feel free to dm
me at that psychology podcast on Instagram. This is where
this episode came from like. I talked about it very
briefly in the Overachieving episode, and the amount of you
that said I want to hear about the eldest daughter
was insane, so thanks for your suggestion. I really hope
(42:24):
that you enjoyed this episode, and we will be back
at the end of this week with another one.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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