What is Eldest Daughter Syndrome?
Eldest Daughter Syndrome (or Oldest Daughter Syndrome) is a term used to describe the mental, emotional, and relationship challenges that eldest daughters often experience growing up and throughout their adult lives.
You might be the eldest daughter if you are the oldest sibling, an only child/daughter, or the oldest daughter even if you have older brothers. Sometimes when there is a significant age difference between siblings and you have a sister who is significantly older than you and didn’t live with you, you may also experience aspects of Eldest Daughter Syndrome.
Is Eldest Daughter Syndrome real?
YES! While it’s not a clinical diagnosis, it describes a group of characteristics that can show up in someone’s personality and ways of interacting with the world around them. These characteristics often start to show up in childhood but are reinforced by the world (and family/community) around the daughter throughout her life.
How does Eldest Daughter Syndrome manifest?
In some families, the eldest daughter can feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility to care for their younger siblings, which can develop into a difficult pattern of prioritizing others over themselves. This can happen in families where the parents work a lot or spend a lot of time outside of the home, leaving the eldest daughter to take care of her younger siblings' daily needs (homework support, making meals, bedtime routines). As the eldest daughter gets older, she carries that sense of responsibility with her into other relationships, both inside and outside of her family throughout her life. Continuing to prioritize others’ needs while putting her own on the back burner.
Eldest Daughter Syndrome can also show up in daughters whose parents did spend a lot of time at home and with them though. In these cases, eldest daughters may feel internal and/or external pressure from their parents to be a “good role model” for their younger siblings and perform well in school and other activities. Growing up and throughout her life, the eldest daughter strives for perfection and gaining the respect and liking of others around her. As she grew up, she may have seen the stress her family experienced with caring for younger siblings’ needs and developed worries about being an additional burden. This can motivate her to want to make it look like everything is okay with her on the outside, even if it doesn’t feel that way on the inside.
If you are an only child, you may still experience Eldest Daughter Syndrome! Especially as an adult with aging parents, you may feel the sole responsibility to care for them without being able to share the weight of those decisions with anyone else.
What are the signs of Oldest Daughter Syndrome?
The specific ways this shows up can vary eldest daughter to eldest daughter, depending on their family dynamics growing up, the culture of the community they grew up in, and societal influences at different points in time. Wonder how being the eldest daughter affects you?
Prioritizing others over yourself
Sacrificing your own preferences or needs in favor of others: In order to not “rock the boat”, you let others make decisions about what restaurant to go to, or where the family vacation will be. Even if you know you won’t like it, you don’t say anything and pretend to enjoy it when you’re around them. You’ve got your “it’s fine, I like it!” poker face mastered!
Giving too much or more than you have the capacity for: Whether it’s that someone asks for your help or you just assume they need it, you tend to max out what you give to others. Sometimes going out of your way in ways you know others are unlikely to, or giving more money or resources even if it means you may be short later on for your own things. You’d rather be a solution to someone else’s problem and take the problem on for yourself than see someone you care about suffer in any way.
Fear or avoidance of being perceived as a burden: Asking for help is the LAST thing you want to do and you do everything possible to avoid it at all costs. The thought of potentially being even the slightest burden to someone else brings up such a visceral response that it almost feels like an allergic reaction!
Internal pressure to be self-sufficient: You feel the need to do things on your own with minimal help because you think that means there’s more help available to go to others. You think “if I can figure this out, mom doesn’t have to do it with me and can go help my brother instead.” This mindset carries into adulthood too in feeling the need to handle things yourself while being the supportive friend, spouse, or coworker, without allowing yourself to show vulnerability to those same friends, spouses, or coworkers.
Perfectionism
Needing to feel in control: You feel the need to be in the driver’s seat in most situations. As a kid, you were the teacher in the play-pretend classroom or mom when your siblings played “house.” Always in charge of the rest of the group’s roles. Now you plan the family vacations and book the reservations. When people throw last-minute changes your way, it triggers anxious frustration, especially if you think those changes will also impact other people too.
Needing to go above and beyond: You are always striving for the A+ or 100% on everything. Your co-worker is out sick? You pick up some of the tasks on their to-do list to get done even if it means staying at work longer, and you pick up a box of vitamin-C tea for them when they get back. Your friend is stressing about where to send their kid to summer camp? You spend an hour looking up camps in their area and sending them an email with names, dates, prices, and sign-up links by the next morning.
Over-functioning in relationships or needing to be the one doing it all: You may feel like the “mom” of a friend group, and may even have had friends identify you as that! You pick the restaurants for friend dinners, double-check that the menu will accommodate your friend’s dietary needs ahead of time, and get there extra early to make sure no one else will have to wait. You coordinate all the family’s plans for the week and try to work your schedule around the kid’s pick-up and drop-off times so your spouse doesn’t have to feel rushed.
Difficulty delegating: Similar to the need to feel in control, you find it so hard to delegate or let other people do things for you. You worry it won’t get done “on time” or quick “enough”, or some small detail that you know you’d double check will be forgotten. You feel like it will take longer to explain all those details to someone else than for you to just do it yourself and know it will be done right the first time.
People-pleasing behaviors
Helping even when it’s not asked: Sometimes our friends and family just need to vent, and you have a great listening and supportive ear. But sometimes you have a hard time stopping there, and feel the urge to do whatever you can to “fix it” for them, offer solutions, or even take action on doing something for them on their behalf.
Difficulty saying no: The thought of saying no to someone’s request of you feels awful, and you more often than not say “yes” before you’ve even really processed what you’re saying “yes” to. The thought of setting boundaries or holding others accountable for things? Your brain screams “NO THANKS!”
Sense of responsibility to “keep the peace” and mediate conflict between others: Mom and sister are arguing about where the family vacation will be this year? You talk with each of them separately about what they want and spend hours researching options that feel like the best compromise, trying to convince both to agree on it. Coworkers feeling tension about whose responsibility the new project will be? You take it onto your already full plate. Your spouse and mother-in-law are fighting about what the family holiday dinner will be this year? You’re hosting anyway so you offer to make both options!
Trying to guide younger siblings, even as adults: Whether or not you had to parent your younger siblings as a kid yourself or not, you feel like you need to be the sibling that “has it all together” or “knows it all” to be a great resource for your younger siblings now. You want to be the one they ask advice from, even as adults. You do everything you can to appear strong and confident to them and keep all the vulnerable parts hidden inside.
Anxiety
Overthinking and second-guessing yourself: You frequently experience choice-paralysis. Sometimes it’s because you’re so busy focusing on what other people want, that it’s become hard to even know what you want. Sometimes it’s because you’re worried your choice will disappoint others. The amount of time spent swirling on decisions feels endless.
Self-doubt and difficulty with self-compassion: The expectations you put on yourself far outweigh the expectations you put on literally anyone else! And when those expectations aren’t met perfectly? Watch out! The self-talk starts saying things you would never say out loud to anyone else, not even your worst enemy!
Difficulty receiving compliments: When others give you compliments, you immediately feel like you have to give 2 compliments back to the other person. Or you minimize them and brush them off, trying to move the conversation in another direction so the spotlight doesn’t feel on you. You’d almost rather receive “constructive feedback”, even though that can just reinforce that self-doubt!
Exhaustion from always being “on” for others: When it comes to doing things for other people, you’re like the Energizer bunny, always on. You’ll sacrifice sleep if you have to if it means you can get something done that someone else is counting on you for. You feel mentally exhausted and emotionally drained so often from doing so much for other people. At the same time, it’s hard to feel like there’s any other choice.
Therapy for eldest Daughter Syndrome
Did you find yourself nodding almost the entire way through that list, thinking “OMG THIS IS ME!”?
Therapy can help you as an oldest daughter to recognize the patterns that have developed throughout your life and create meaningful change. The next blog post includes some strategies for overcoming Eldest Daughter Syndrome, but you don’t have to wait until then to learn how therapy with Kimberleigh can help you! Schedule a 20-minute free consult call here now!
