“It may be said that no two children have exactly the same parents, in that the parenting they each receive may vary in highly significant ways. Whatever the hopes, wishes or intentions of the parent, the child does not experience the parent directly: the child experiences the parenting. I have known two siblings to disagree vehemently about their father’s personality during their childhood. Neither has to be wrong if we understand that they did not receive the same fathering, which is what formed their experience of the father. I have even seen subtly but significantly different mothering given to a pair of identical twins.”
― Gabor Maté, Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It
Picture this – the eldest daughter in an immigrant South Asian family, spending a majority of her childhood in various apartment complexes, eventually accumulating more long distance friends than physical ones. Growing up, her family did not have secure finances. This meant that she could not afford braces when her teeth grew crooked, and could not participate in sports she was interested in outside of school. What she wished to be hers was always “ours.”
Now imagine her younger sister, born four years and 361 days after her. The first few years of her life, this younger sister grew up similarly, but quite quickly their experiences diverged. This younger sister spent a majority of her life in a house, in which she had her own room and privacy early on. She set roots in a new school at a young age, leading her to have many friends that she wasn’t forced to leave at the height of her development. She was enrolled in ballet, gymnastics, and got braces as a teenager. Her disposition was completely different from her older sister’s – she was always more loud, more talkative, more argumentative. The things that made the older sister angry, she just laughed it off.
If you grew up as the eldest daughter of a household, something about the differences in these life experiences may resonate with you. But what accounts for this huge discrepancy in emotional response?
The experience of being the eldest daughter in a family has become so universal that it’s attached to its own unique “syndrome” – the Eldest Daughter Syndrome. Although not an official diagnosis or mental illness, it highlights a unique set of traits that most of these daughters share – heightened level of responsibility, people-pleasing tendencies, anxiety, confusion with identity, and challenges in forming healthy relationships.
You may have caught on by now that these hypotheticals I presented are drawn from my own life, and I admit that the Eldest Daughter Syndrome is something I have found myself relating to. I am fortunate enough to be part of a family that is willing and able to support me in many different ways, but as I grew older, the pressures of being the oldest child chipped away at me. I felt like I was on the frontlines– always the first to be asked to set aside my time and forfeit my simple aspirations, the first to be blamed for any negative attributes that my sister displayed even when I was just a child myself.
“She learned this from you,” they would say.
And yet, who did I learn it from? Surely there was a reason I became more and more reactive as I grew up.
Needless to say, as the years went on, I felt absolutely suffocated. I had the itch to leave and get as far away from home as possible. It was the selfish desire to live a life where I was responsible for nobody but myself, without being asked to put everything aside to serve somebody else. I knew it was my duty to do these things for my family, but I hated having to sacrifice my time for little to no appreciation, just to be continuously looked down upon and be called irresponsible or immature. I wanted to be in an environment that valued my time, my kindness, and my efforts, because I couldn’t help but feel that I was a defective prototype, while my younger sister was the polished model.
There is a weird sense of relief when your sibling, particularly your younger sibling, proves to be more capable than you, whether it’s in the realm of academics, leadership, or relationships. It felt as if I could shrink into the shadows without this weight of expectations and continue to pursue my selfish goals. I understand my parents never had any malicious intent, and they raised me the only way they knew how with the limited resources they had. For that I’m grateful – but I also understand that I am the consequence of being raised in an insecure environment, being forced into responsibilities I didn’t want, and never receiving the positive reinforcement that I constantly craved.
Often I questioned myself. Was I really selfish? Was it wrong for me to want things for myself? Was I ungrateful if I argued, if I wanted to stand up for myself? Should I not want to help my parents? I did want to help them, that was the thing. But a little bit of flexibility, a little bit of appreciation, would have gone a long way. Things always felt unnaturally rigid, and I was constantly plagued with guilt and anxiety for choosing myself. At 18, I had so much financial guilt the first time I bought a pair of sneakers with my own money that I cried myself to sleep. It was $60, and I was at war with myself for a week wondering if I should return it, wondering if I should’ve saved that money for my tuition payment.
So there I was, the distant daughter that wanted to leave home and travel and explore without any family burden, who eventually moved across the country to go to college in a place where nobody knew my name. Then who moved again to a different side of the country to pursue my masters. Barely calling home. Never wanting to tell my parents what I was up to, because a part of me felt that if I kept all of my experiences to myself, they couldn’t be judged or invalidated. I hate to say that the first time I felt my parents’ love was from a 1500 mile distance, because it wasn’t marked by arguments and thankless requests, even though I knew that was never their intention.
Then, there was my sister, who graduated second ranked in her class and got into the university I was rejected from. My sister, who called my parents consistently and always told them everything that was happening in her life, always pushing the boundary of things she could discuss. When I was twenty and there were any boys in the room, I would step out to take my parent’s call just so they wouldn’t hear male voices in the background and assume the worst. My sister, at twenty, brought home her first boyfriend to meet the family.
It’s a hilarious and bittersweet progression to witness how much things can change in a 5-year timespan. I was precocious as a child, with adults outside my family often remarking on how “mature” and “responsible” I was. But as I grow older, I feel myself regressing into some of the childish habits and behaviors I spurned when I was that age. I spent so many years in a cage of expectation and obedience that I now want to make peace with the childhood version of me that felt I had to be “grown.”
To any eldest daughters out there – we’re in this together. Know that you are just a product of your environment, and this does not make you lesser. Oftentimes, the love and appreciation from your family is left unspoken, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not there. However, it doesn’t mean that you can’t desire something more. Your level of responsibility, your patience, your independence are your strengths, but do not let it consume you. And maybe you grew up precocious too – try to find that sense of fun and whimsy you thought you had to reject as a kid. It may bring a new sense of fulfillment to your life experiences you didn’t know you needed.
