"This year, for the first time, she didn't make the family calendar. And she could already see what was coming. In a few months, her mom would text and ask who's hosting the Easter holiday or what's the plan for a Memorial Day weekend get-together. And she'd smile and text back, "I'm not sure-I haven't checked with anyone." How would it go? She wasn't sure yet, but it feels like a good start."
"Many daughters can relate to this feeling, though it may be the firstborn who knows it all too well. It's the preparedness of thinking about family before anyone else; it's a quiet vigilance of holding together the things that nobody else will. It's the unpaid labor of doing daughtering. Daughtering is the effort that women put into making and sustaining family connection, and its labor and resource requirements are often invisible to everyone who benefits from it ( Alford, 2019)."
Daughtering refers to the unpaid, often invisible work of coordinating family logistics, sustaining relationships, and anticipating others' needs. Eldest daughters frequently inherit these responsibilities by default and perform persistent caregiving and management without explicit consent or renegotiation. Family roles evolve, but expectations about who will shoulder emotional and logistical labor rarely get revisited. Intentionally stepping back from default duties can provide relief and reveal that family functioning does not solely depend on one person's management. Different ways of being a daughter carry trade-offs, and decisions about boundaries and care involve real costs and consequences.
Read at Psychology Today
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