If you’re a middle-aged woman, you might catch yourself thinking about how much work you do for your family. Physical and emotional labor are so common for you, and you probably don’t hear many thank yous back. Why would you, when it’s expected, right? Eldest daughters may relate to this in a very specific way, because they may have taken on the role of parent to their siblings from a young age, and now, as their parents are getting older, they find themselves stepping in to become caregivers and “parent” them as well. Up until now, that’s what we’d say: you’re “mothering your mother” or “parenting your parents.” But Dr. Allison Alford, a professor, researcher, scholar and author, began using a term that better describes this: "daughtering."“Daughtering is the often invisible labor, like mental, logistical, emotional identity labor that adult women do in families to keep everyone connected, and they often don't even realize they're doing it until they're burnt out,” Dr. Alford tells Parade. In her new book, Good Daughtering: The Work You’ve Always Done, the Credit You’ve Never Gotten, and How to Finally Feel Like Enough, which came out Feb. 17, she looks at the exhausting, “hidden work” daughters take on in families, specifically as they hit middle age.If you relate to the concept of daughtering, or are the oldest in your family, Dr. Alford has a lot more to say about the assumed and unacknowledged labor daughters do for their families. She shares five habits that eldest daughters often share that relate to this as well, along with the long-term impact of those behaviors.Related: 6 Compliments a Child Psychologist Is Begging Parents and Grandparents To Stop Saying
The 4 Forms ‘Daughtering’ Comes In
Even though “daughtering” is a seemingly new verb, Dr. Alford didn’t come up with the term; it’s been used for decades in different ways. Notably, she brings up Dr. Venus E. Evans-Winters’s usage of it in Black feminist theory, which she’s currently still doing research on. Dr. Alford notes, though, that she’s using “daughtering” like you would use “parenting” or “mothering,” “to identify an active and ongoing role portrayal that you've cobbled together.” This particular context hasn’t had much (or any) conversation about it thus far, which is why she spent over a decade researching this.Dr. Alford’s book focuses specifically on daughters who are hitting midlife, when there are a lot of shifts in life and more work put onto their plates. Events such as “kinship shifts” in their families—when adult children need to become caretakers for their parents, or there are shifts in generational roles—lead these daughters to take charge, because someone “has to.”But even if you’re not turning into a caregiver for your parents, daughtering labor shows up in many ways, and she wrote this book to “shine a light on all the forms of daughtering that women do across decades of our lifespan that don't get enough attention.”Daughtering shows up as a “form of work in four different ways”:
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Dr. Alford notes that out of the four ways daughters do their work, the “acting” part is the only visible one. And that creates a situation where daughters are doing all of this work without any recognition. “Anytime we do emotional work, other people have a hard time seeing it. It's not something you can hold in your hand,” she states, adding that other people, especially family members, are not aware of how hard you're working, how depleted your “battery” is or how much “bandwidth” you’re giving to them, as a gift to your parents and to your family.They do a thankless job, and family members reap the benefits but don’t understand or acknowledge the exhausting labor daughters do to get there. “It's like some road work crew came through and fixed the road and fixed the potholes, but nobody saw them do it,” she shares. “And so nobody was standing there clapping like, ‘Great job,’ you know?”Dr. Alford points out that this can often lead to these women—eldest daughters in particular—getting burnt out.“They're doing a lot of the invisible things… and then they have a hard time stopping themselves, or they feel like they have to keep going because they've been carrying it for so long, they don't know how to put it down,” she explains.
How ‘Eldest Daughter Syndrome’ Fits in With the Concept of Daughtering
Thanks to the more recent popularity of the term “eldest daughter syndrome,” daughtering seems to describe a lot of what was already in conversation when it came to eldest daughters. However, all daughters, regardless of birth order, can (and often do) take up the labor of daughtering. Dr. Alford shares that the concept of eldest daughter syndrome comes from the context of big families and how they grew up, not just them at midlife. “... Part of what's not being said is that many of the ‘eldest daughter syndrome’ stories have to do with large families… there are lots of kids that need to be taken care of, so that is how an eldest daughter ends up with more care work,” she says. “They often can be individuals who feel like who feel heavily parentified in their childhood, can be from immigrant families or low-income families, where children become child care workers. That is an eldest female child problem, and it does have to do with being female, and it does have to do with these other contextual issues.”Related: 8 Habits To Start With Your Adult Kids That Will Transform Your Relationship, According to Psychologists
The first habit Dr. Alford mentions is preemptive fixing, or becoming a roadblock remover. “So, women in general are taught to observe and prepare and think ahead and notice something before it happens. But eldest daughters are very hyper aware,” she shares. She gives an example of an eldest daughter being able to “see in advance” that one sibling is bringing up a topic that is going to upset their mother, so the eldest daughter steps in so that dinner isn’t ruined. They’re thinking, “I'm going to go fix the sibling's attitude, so that that never impacts mom, so that never impacts dinner, and then we are all safe.”“But it's really this, like hyperawareness, this preemptive fixing,” she shares. “So I think about it as just the road crew out there taking away the barriers before anybody was awake in the morning or driving down that road.” While she notes that this habit can be “helpful and beneficial,” it’s invisible, and since people “never hit the road block,” they don’t know you’ve removed it in the first place. This means they also will never know “that it took something from you, that it took your mindfulness and your cognitive space and your emotional reserves,” she explains.
2. Overfunctioning
“I think the second habit is carrying way too much," Dr. Alford shares. "So in line with being the person who can see everything, the eldest daughter often feels as if she can see it, and it's hers to carry, and she goes out ahead of everybody, and she picks up everything.”When an event comes around, the eldest daughter says, “I’m going to bring the cake, balloons and mom’s gift,” on top of making the invites or decorations and reminding everyone to come to the party. But by the time the party comes around, she’s exhausted and might be thinking, “I did everything, and nobody offered to do anything.” However, in her overfunctioning, she doesn’t realize people don’t know how to do anything because she always does it all. People often think she actually does it because she enjoys it. Dr. Alford says that at least part of this habit comes from “the fear that something will drop, no one will pick it up and then that will cause a fallout.” And the cyclical thing about this is that it often does happen if the eldest daughter doesn’t do everything, but only because she’s never let other people in on the fact that she needs help. And if people aren’t offering to help, they don’t know how to or what she needs assistance with, and therefore, they won’t step in if she doesn’t. “They never had any experience learning how to look forward to the future, figure things out, anticipate and resolve,” she points out.
“They have the vibe of what the emotions are going to be around this event, a particular discussion or when a certain set of people get in the room,” Dr. Alford explains. “You're tracking it, you're gathering the data, you're watching people's faces, you're listening for little sounds and laughter or anger, and you're just very aware of who needs what and how to steer the ship, or when to bring out an umbrella and the rain jacket.”Interestingly, this urge might not be one that you should fix. “Just because it's a habit doesn't necessarily make it a bad habit,” she notes. However, if left unchecked, this can still become a draining behavior. So, she recommends “narrating” your forecasts a little bit more by sharing that you're “emotional forecasting again,” with a friend or partner. You can then work through your thoughts and they can “help take it on with you,” Dr. Alford shares. Oftentimes, it’s best to get support from people outside of your parents or siblings, because family can be a little too close to the situation to hear constructive criticism. “We have to lean into all of our different kinds of support systems, because our family members might not change, even if we tell them about all that we're doing,” she states.
4. Overexplaining
Dr. Alford shares that oftentimes, because eldest daughters often put their family first, when they start choosing themselves, it can feel wrong and lead to guilt. And this is where overexplaining comes in.“So when you do make a decision that's for you, or you do choose to put [up] a boundary, a lot of times, you feel like you have to justify that,” she tells Parade. “You have to make everyone agree that that was a good thing that you're allowed to do. And unless you get that consensus from the crowd—that they all agree—then it's really hard to hold your boundary.”Essentially, she shares that “you don’t have to fully explain” why you’re choosing to do something or why you’re creating boundaries around something. This, of course, means that people might be upset, disappointed or frustrated with you, but need to be OK to sit in that discomfort. You’re not going to please everyone, and the days of you doing so can be behind you if you choose that. “It's really hard to remind yourself that those emotions are for them to carry and not for you to carry,” she says. “So you don't have to get everyone to believe you and agree with you about what's fair. You just need to know what you think is fair and right for you and hold that line.”
5. Managing after-effects
Dr. Alford compares this last eldest daughter to the smoke trails from a jet; the jet’s long gone, yet the eldest daughter is still doing the work and worrying about said jet. This can look like worrying or replaying moments from a situation over in your head after everyone else has moved on.“Sometimes you send a follow-up message like, ‘Oh, I feel so cringe about that thing I said,’ or ‘Did I hurt your feelings?’ And we're even managing things after the fact, after they've been said and done,” she explains. She notes that this actually can be a good thing that doesn’t need fixing. It’s good to care about people and have empathy. Eldest daughters “really deeply [want] our people to feel loved,” she says, which is beautiful. However, you can go overboard with it. Once you get into ruminating territory, you should try to stop yourself from overdoing it. “If you're going to wake up in the middle of the night two weeks later and be like, ‘I can't believe I said that,’ then you've taken it too far,” she shares. “You have to find a place where you can say, ‘So, I did what I did. I said what I said, I like myself. Let's move on.’ And I think daughters deserve to feel like we are loved in our family, and we don't have to earn that or be perfect to get it.”Related: 8 Things Emotionally Intelligent Mothers-in-Law Do Differently, According to a Psychologist
What Is the Long-Term Impact of These Eldest Daughter Habits?
While long-term effects aren’t a one-size-fits-all situation, Dr. Alford says that a lot of times, eldest daughters just feel “taken for granted” because of these habits (and because of the expectations surrounding them). And once they feel taken for granted, they can spiral into other harmful thoughts.“... You feel like everything you've given—this hard work, this time, this energy, this money, this thoughtfulness, this kindness, this love—doesn't matter to anyone. I don't matter to anyone,” she states. “And the research [shows] that there is a physiological benefit [and] a benefit to your body, when you feel like you matter, that your work is valuable, that people see it, that they give credit to it, that in and of itself, can make it worthwhile.”Essentially, Dr. Alford shares that “daughters want to feel like [their] work matters,” and like they’re seen and acknowledged.“It's not always that we want to do less or that we want to stop being the big sister who brings the fun gifts for the nieces and nephews, or something,” she notes. “It's not like everybody wants to stop doing those things. I think there's an element of it’s just be so nice to be treasured for the unique gifts that you bring to the family.”And if eldest daughters—and daughters in general, as the book Good Daughtering posits—continue to not feel treasured or as if their work is just assumed and unacknowledged, detrimental impacts can include consequences to their mental health, in their career, in their romantic relationships and more. Something Dr. Alford does for herself, so she doesn’t get to this point, is to think about the concept of the legacy of a family, her family, and how she wants to enjoy her time with them now. That makes a “big impression” on her kids, and she wants them to “replicate” what they do for her as they get older. “So I don't do it all altruistically, but I feel like there's a responsibility there to think that. So I need to enjoy. I want to enjoy being a part of a family so that I can continue to replicate that over decades to come, so that my family also wants to enjoy me,” she shares. “So if eldest daughters allow ourselves to get in that space of burnout, resentment, fatigue, feeling invisible—then we sometimes break… Instead, we need to find balance, because there's a lot of beauty in being in a family and having people who will support you, but you got to let them learn how to support you back.”
The last part of Dr. Alford’s book title is “How to Finally Feel Like Enough,” which is often the sticking point for daughters who “daughter” (again, as a verb). They’re often putting themselves through the wringer, stretching themselves thin and using all of their energy to make “perfect” memories for family members or to make sure their parents are taken care of in their old age, along with other things. And, just as eldest daughters experience the desire to overexplain so they’re accepted and allowed to do things for themselves, daughters in general often strive to feel “good enough,” despite all of the emotional and physical labor they put in for their families. So with that said, she notes that daughters can feel good enough by setting “good enough” standards for themselves. She goes more in-depth about this in her book, but essentially, making a rubric for yourself where you lay out how much work you can do that will feel like it’s plenty enough for others, while still being kind to yourself. “If I really did set out a list and say to myself, ‘This is what it means to be good enough, and if I hit some or all or most of these markers, I am going to allow myself to feel good about myself, and I'm not going to sabotage my own wellbeing,’” she suggests. “So there's some inner work, some personal growth there of allowing ourselves to feel worthy at the level that we set for ourselves. But we can't really find that adjustment unless we start to say out loud where that bar is, where the finish line is.”Instead of striving to be perfect and A+-daughters, she says that they should work towards being B+-daughters. “Actually, aim for a B+, because you don't need to be any better than a B+-daughter in your family,” she states. “You've got to save some for your personal life or your inner life, or the other people who love you. And once you acknowledge that, you can feel like ‘I'm enough.’ And there's such a relief in allowing yourself to feel that and believe it.”Up Next:
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Dr. Allison Alford is a professor, researcher, scholar and author of Good Daughtering: The Work You’ve Always Done, the Credit You’ve Never Gotten, and How to Finally Feel Like Enough.Hence then, the article about 5 exhausting habits of eldest daughters a researcher warns was published today ( ) and is available on Parade ( Saudi Arabia ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
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