Maybe you’ve felt like the family’s designated “moderator” your entire life, responsible for diffusing arguments and making sure everyone else is taken care of before attending to your own needs. Or maybe you feel like you’re the only one taking care of your aging parents. Do you happen to be the oldest daughter in your family?
[Read: What to Do When You Become the Family Caregiver]
Unpacking Eldest Daughter Syndrome
Eldest (or oldest) daughter syndrome isn’t an official psychiatric diagnosis like depression or anxiety. Instead, it’s a descriptive term that refers to the complex social-emotional experience of many firstborn women.
“It really speaks to this pattern of eldest daughters feeling internal and external pressure to be the peacekeepers of the family,” says Kimberleigh Hagar, a licensed clinical social worker and owner of Mindfully Balanced Therapy. “(Eldest daughters are) the ones to mediate and find the compromise and coordinate things and make sure that conflict is minimized in all the ways.”
She says that this pressure and responsibility often comes at the expense of a person’s own wants, needs, inner peace, energy and resources.
[SEE: Best Ways to Practice Self-Care.]
Who experiences eldest daughter syndrome?
Eldest daughter syndrome isn’t specifically limited to only oldest daughters, and not all eldest daughters will experience the associated pressures and challenges.
“Eldest daughters can mean a lot of different things,” says Hagar. She says the same challenges are often felt by:
— Only children
— Women with older brothers
— Women with sisters who are much older than them (significant age gaps)
[READ: Senior Living Benefits: Providing Respite for Adult Children]
Real-Life Examples of Eldest Daughter Syndrome
Oldest daughters can experience pressure throughout life, starting at a young age all the way through adulthood. For example:
— Eldest daughters who have several younger siblings may take on caregiving responsibilities, like getting siblings ready for bed, helping with homework, preparing school lunches or even supporting siblings emotionally.
— When family members have disagreements, eldest daughters may feel the need to mediate arguments. They often feel responsible for other people’s emotions and simultaneously internalize their own.
— In immigrant families, eldest daughter syndrome can be heightened by the daughter feeling a responsibility to be a “cultural broker.” For example, a child in school may translate and interpret for their family, as well as help them navigate new customs.
— In addition to caregiving, eldest daughters may experience pressure to be a role model for younger siblings by succeeding academically or at work.
— When an eldest daughter decides to go to college or move away from home, they may feel guilty for prioritizing their own needs and wants.
— In adulthood, an eldest daughter may become part of the “sandwich generation,” where they end up raising their own children at the same time as they’re caring for their aging parents.
[SEE: Sandwich Generation Stress: How to Cope With Kids and Aging Parents]
Biological Basis for Eldest Daughter Syndrome
A 15-year longitudinal study published in Psychoneuroendocrinology in 2024 shed light on a biological and evolutionary explanation behind why eldest daughter syndrome exists.
“(This study) is an extremely valuable scientific resource,” explains Molly Fox, a biological anthropologist and associate professor in the department of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Because we’re able to follow these families from early pregnancy through the child’s pubertal development, we’re able to ask questions in a prospective way,” she explains.
The study asked mothers about their stress levels while they were pregnant, and then looked at children’s developmental timelines. They found that eldest daughters of mothers who experienced high levels of prenatal stress reached adrenal puberty faster.
Adrenal puberty, explains Fox, is responsible for secondary sex characteristics, but also coordinates with brain maturation. Once someone has a growth spurt, their voice lowers and they look more like an adult, they’ll begin to take on a more adult-like role in their community. Daughters reach this point faster, the study found, if their mothers are stressed during pregnancy. And, the association is strongest for first-born daughters. The same isn’t true for male children. A mother’s stress during pregnancy was found to have no effect on their son’s developmental timeline.
Benefits and drawbacks to parentification of oldest daughters
From an evolutionary perspective, this is beneficial to mothers in resource-poor environments, as eldest daughters will step in and help with younger siblings in the family if they reach adrenal puberty faster.
“Women who are in unfavorable circumstances might have an adaptive benefit to securing them a ‘helper at the nest’ earlier,” explains Fox.
While eldest daughters helping their mothers with parenting can be beneficial to the survival of the entire family, it also increases stress and responsibility for that eldest daughter, especially in the modern era.
“I don’t see it as inherently negative that eldest daughters participate in childcare,” says Fox. “The problem really only comes to light when you have this kind of evolutionary mismatch.”
In today’s society, where children have expectations and responsibilities outside the home, like working jobs, going to school and doing homework, the responsibility may become overwhelming, leading to eldest daughter syndrome and burnout.
“That’s where you see some incompatibility, where a lot of participation in childcare of your siblings might become more burdensome in the context of these other obligations that are relatively novel in human evolutionary history,” explains Fox.
[See: 10 Unexpected Signs That You’re Stressed]
Signs and Symptoms of Eldest Daughter Syndrome
Eldest daughters face mental and emotional challenges because of their expected role within the family.
“Because of the pressures, family expectations and gendered roles placed on eldest daughters, they often grow up as the family’s ‘third parent,'” says Tasha Bailey, a psychotherapist, author of “Real Talk” and content creator. “This shapes them into being responsible, high-achieving and at times perfectionistic.”
These characteristics often start to show up early in life, but reinforced by internal pressure from family and external pressure from society throughout a person’s life.
Perfectionism and high expectations
Internal and external pressure can cause eldest daughters to feel the need to be a perfect role model for younger siblings, as well as take on adult responsibility at a young age.
“As adults, eldest daughters are more prone to burnout, compassion fatigue and toxic shame when they make perfectly human mistakes,” says Bailey.
Anxiety
Many eldest daughters feel responsible for family issues, from caring for their younger siblings to mediating family disputes. Being the point of responsibility for family affairs can cause anxiety and stress.
Relationship issues
Managing family relationships along with personal connections can be overwhelming. Plus, when oldest daughters take on the role of a parent to their younger siblings, this can carry over to relationships, both platonic and romantic, later in life.
“Many also struggle with vulnerability, finding it difficult to express their needs openly or to trust others with them,” says Bailey.
Difficulty setting boundaries
As early caregivers, eldest daughters learn to be a “helper” in the family at a young age. As responsibilities grow, they may find it difficult to say “no” and to set boundaries with family members, friends and coworkers.
People-pleasing tendencies
Eldest daughters who have learned to cater to other people’s needs from a young age may find themselves continuing this throughout their lives, putting other people’s needs above their own.
Eldest Daughter Burnout and Caregiving
Eldest daughters can experience burnout due to the pressure and expectations that they face, particularly when it comes to caregiving.
As an oldest daughter’s parents age, the daughter may feel a heightened sense of this pressure, leading to caregiver burnout.
Hagar explains that caregiving responsibilities, including going to doctors appointments, having difficult conversations and coordinating plans, can be made even more difficult in combination with eldest daughter syndrome.
“When those two things come hand in hand, we have this eldest daughter pattern of being like ‘I have to be the only one to do this. This burden is mine,'” Hagar explains. “And then we have the burnout coming from the caregiver part of it where we need help but we’re not going to ask for help because this eldest daughter stuff has taught us that we can’t.”
Mental Health Tips for Eldest Daughter Syndrome
“Some eldest daughters may find themselves often self-sacrificing their desires and hopes in order to prioritize the needs of others in the family,” says Bailey.
When it comes to managing the burnout or mental health problems that can come with eldest daughter syndrome, here are a few tips:
— Set boundaries. While easier said than done, setting boundaries can involve saying “no” when you need to or even limiting the hours when you’re readily available to family members. Boundaries can be set in relationships with siblings, parents, friends or other family members.
— Prioritize self-care. This can mean self-care within caregiving, so for example, not scheduling parents’ doctors appointments early in the morning if you’re taking them to those appointments and are not a morning person.
“Prioritizing that self-care could also just look like making sure that your own doctor’s appointments are getting taken care of, that you’re not skipping lunch, that you’re taking care of your body’s physical survival needs. As humans we also get really good at ignoring hunger, thirst and sleep cues, but that also contributes to burnout,” says Hagar.
— Name wants and needs. For example, if you’ve taken on the responsibility of caring for your parents, but feel that you need to hire professional caregiving help, then you should name that as something you’ll need.
— Share responsibility. When possible, share responsibility for caregiving needs with your siblings. The responsibility doesn’t need to be divided equally, but the resources your siblings do have to offer can take some of the burden off of your shoulders.
How therapy can help oldest daughters
Therapy can be a great resource if you feel like you’re experiencing the negative aspects of eldest daughter syndrome. Having any of the feelings related to eldest daughter syndrome is a valid reason to get in touch with a therapist, who can help you in ways you might not even know are possible.
For starters, Hagar helps clients clarify their wants and needs, something many of them haven’t done in a long time, she says. Then, they connect those wants and needs to their values to emphasize the importance of not minimizing your own wants and needs.
A therapist can also help you communicate these wants and needs with your family.
“So often for my eldest daughters, they’re really good at prioritizing the relationship needs and just brushing the self-respect needs off to the side,” she says. “We talk about some tools that really help us to allow both of those things to be present and consistent in that communication.”
If any of these feelings resonate with you, a therapist can help reduce your feelings of stress and give you tools to communicate with friends and family in a fulfilling way.
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Eldest Daughter Syndrome and Burnout: Causes, Impacts and Coping Tips originally appeared on usnews.com
