While the first child in a family always receives the majority of attention and love in the household, he or she is also entitled to take charge of family matters, especially playing an active role in the family’s primary decisions. When the unborn child is a girl, an unspoken responsibility envelops her, expecting her to assume the duty of prioritising family over everything else and being protective. While this has become quite a normal phenomenon in today’s world, a term is presently trending on social media called ‘Elder Daughter Syndrome’, a condition that describes the emotional weight that elder daughters often carry in families.
Many have taken to social media to lament about their experience as the eldest daughter and the impact that it has had on their relationships and mental health.
To better understand the concept of the Elder Daughter Syndrome, let’s paint a picture of a girl born first in the family.
WHAT IS ELDER DAUGHTER SYNDROME?
The eldest daughter plays an important role in the family system taking on all the emotional, physical, and domestic labour firsthand. This makes the girl feel like she is responsible for taking care of everything and everyone around her. The girl also faces higher expectations placed on her as a newborn, while siblings are given more freedom to be their authentic selves.
In simple terms, feeling such a kind of pressure or a certain level of responsibility starting from birth due to the dynamics in a family basically can be described as the Elder Daughter Syndrome.
Those dealing with EDS can also detect certain symptoms like an experience like bearing excessive responsibilities, increased parental reliance, lack of childhood experiences, parentified behaviour, boundary issues, the guilt of not being able to meet their responsibilities, and difficulty saying no or creating boundaries. All of these also affect the other relationships both negatively and positively.
A sense of responsibility, resilience, and ambitions from a very young age can help in bringing strong leadership qualities and determination for success, thus coming up as extremely beneficial for professional relations.
The syndrome can also lead to challenges in interpersonal relations such as issues in establishing boundaries, prioritising self-care, or difficulty in expressing one’s weaknesses or vulnerability.
