Eldest daughter syndrome

[Jazzy]

Have you heard of “eldest daughter syndrome”? It’s the emotional burden eldest daughters tend to take on (and are encouraged to take on) in many families from a young age.

From caring for younger siblings, helping out with everyday chores, looking after sick parents to sorting shopping orders or online deliveries, eldest daughters often shoulder a heavy but invisible burden of domestic responsibility from a young age.

What’s wrong with that? You might ask, shouldn’t the eldest children, who are supposed to be more grown-up, help out and look after their younger siblings? Aren’t girls “naturally” better at caring? These popular assumptions are so entrenched that they can make it difficult for us to see the problem.

But #EldestDaughterSyndrome is now trending on TikTok, with adolescent girls speaking out about the unfair amount of unpaid (and unappreciated) labour they do in their families, as well as discussing its adverse effects on their lives, health and wellbeing.

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Did you experience Eldest daughter syndrome when you were growing up?

 

[Lamb]

That's the problem with the "me" society we've come to know in modern times. It's all about me, me, me. In biblical times, it was about the family and the community as a whole. People weren't so selfish.

 

[tango]

It's a tricky one. It's reasonable that family workload should be shared more fairly than just dumping it all on the oldest girl but these days it seems just about everything is considered a trigger for all kinds of trauma, kids aren't expected to do anything except play regardless of its impact on anyone or anything else, and then we wonder why our young people are so totally unprepared for adulthood.

I remember growing up I got pretty good at getting out of having to do jobs around the house. At the time I thought I was pretty clever. When I got my own place it was easy to get out of doing anything I didn't want to do, but it didn't take me very long to figure out that nobody else was going to do it so I might as well get used to it.

The relentless "me, me, me" focus seems to be the kind of thing that lets people think they can do whatever they want, but then they complain when others don't fall into line with their expectations.

It reminds me of a curious letter I saw on an advice column recently. The gist of us was that the writer's daughter had recently married, and they had uninvited the bride's uncle because of his political views. He wasn't an extremist, he had never shown any inappropriate behaviors, but apparently the bride didn't feel safe with someone at her wedding who didn't share her political views. But then the bride was upset that the uninvited uncle (who had graciously accepted having his invitation withdrawn) hadn't sent a gift, because he was wealthy. So apparently she would have been so badly disturbed by his viewpoints that she couldn't tolerate his presence, but still wanted his presents.