The Eldest Daughter Wound: How Parentification Shows Up in Adult Relationships

The Eldest Daughter Wound: How Parentification Shows Up in Adult Relationships

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Written by: Janine Cheng

Published on October 2, 2024

At Atlas, we specialize in the support of eldest, parentified daughters.

Let’s learn more about what you might be experiencing and how therapy can help.

For many eldest daughters, growing up meant becoming “the third parent” before getting to be a child.

This experience, often called parentification when expanded into a chronic pattern, can shape how we move through the world: how we relate, how we work, how we love, and even how we make sense of our needs.

In therapy, the stories of eldest, parentified daughters are often threaded with themes of over-functioning, guilt, and a chronic sense of emotional responsibility. These patterns don’t vanish in adulthood. Instead, they show up—quietly or loudly—in our friendships, workplaces, and romantic relationships.

Let’s break down some common ways this dynamic might play out and how therapy can help.

In Romantic Relationships: Caretaking Over Connection

Many parentified daughters learn early on that love is earned through caretaking. They may receive praise from parents for being helpful. They often function as a source of emotional support for their caregivers and are valued for the ways they minimize themselves and their needs. Parentified daughters grow up hearing messages like: “You’re like a little adult!”, ‘I don’t know what I would do without you”, “Thank you for being so easy”, “You’re so easy to talk to”, “I feel like I can tell you anything”, “You never cry or misbehave. Thank you for always making my life easier”, “I never have to worry about you”. 

This messaging, when repeated over time, shapes the eldest daughter’s developmental path. Behavioral patterns are woven into her identity as she learns to replicate behaviors that are consistently reinforced through parental praise. She learns to prioritize the comfort of those around her and to disconnect from her own needs in the process. She becomes hyper-attuned to the moods, behaviors and desires of those around her in order to better anticipate their needs and pre-emptively meet them. She is continually shown that her value is in her ability to make others happy by minimizing their stress and accommodating them.  In adulthood, this messaging can translate into:

• Being the emotional manager in the relationship

• Struggling to express needs without guilt
  Choosing emotionally unavailable or dependent partners

• Confusing enmeshment with intimacy

• Taking on the role of logistical manager and planner

These women often default to “fixing” rather than receiving. They may feel more comfortable in chaos than calm, because chaos is familiar and being needed feels safer than being loved.

In Friendships: Loyalty at the Cost of Self

Eldest daughters may be known as the “strong friend,” always available, rarely in crisis. In friendships, this can look like:

• Avoiding conflict to maintain harmony

• Taking on the emotional labor of the group

• Feeling resentful but unable to set boundaries

• Attracting friends who drain more than they give

• Being responsible for coordinating plans

• Feeling drained by social interactions

There may be an unspoken fear that if they stop over-giving and over-functioning, they will be left behind. They may hold the belief that their friends have chosen to be in friendship with them because of their caregiving nature and that to shift and reduce their contributions would not only be unfair to their friends but would also lead to them abandoning her. This makes mutual, reciprocal friendships feel foreign or unachievable.

It also contributes to feelings of social exhaustion and isolation. Eldest daughters may not feel seen, understood or cared for in their friendships because they are unlikely to vulnerably share their needs with others. It’s hard to understand someone if we don’t know what their needs are and it’s hard to understand someone’s needs if they never share them. Thus, eldest daughters may have wide social networks but still feel emotionally alone and unseen. 

In Professional Settings: The Pressure to Overachieve

In work environments, these dynamics can show up as:

• Taking on too much responsibility without recognition

• Struggling to delegate or ask for help

• Overworking to prove worth

• Feeling like a fraud despite competence

• Difficulty setting professional boundaries

The need to be “the reliable one” becomes a survival strategy. The eldest daughter has likely achieved a great deal of success, in part due to her willingness to go above and beyond, at times without adequate recognition and compensation. She may have a hard time advocating for pay increases and title changes due to persistent imposter syndrome. Burnout is common, but rest can feel dangerous because her self-worth is linked to productivity. For the eldest parentified daughter, work may be a source of confidence, but one that feels precarious and that requires control (through micro-management and perfectionism) and sustained effort to maintain. 

How Therapy Can Help: Reclaiming the Self

Working with a therapist offers a space to unpack these inherited roles and to rewrite your emotional script. Here’s how therapy can support eldest, parentified daughters:

• Identifying the Original Wound: Therapy can help connect the dots between early family dynamics and current relational patterns. Insight into these patterns can help you recognize and unpack internalized messages about yourself, relationships and the world and slowly work towards challenging and re-writing them. Modalities like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Internal Family Systems (IFS) can help you in building this awareness with compassion.
  

• Differentiating Between Guilt and Responsibility: Many eldest daughters feel intense guilt when prioritizing themselves. Therapy helps you learn that caring for yourself is not the same as abandoning others. Through a combination of CBT-which helps you recognize and restructure distorted cognitions-and exposure therapy, you’ll become increasingly more capable of tolerating the discomfort and unfamiliarity of putting yourself first.
  

• Boundary Work: You learn to say “no” without shame, and to see limits not as rejection but as protection of your health and the health of your relationships. You will better understand the core fears associated with boundary setting and the ways you have maladaptively coped through self-abandonment.
  

• Needs Identification: Many parentified daughters are out of touch with what they actually want. Through a combination of somatic practices and IFS, you’ll learn to reconnect with your body and with exiled parts of yourself that have been too fearful to show up consistently. 

• Repatterning Relationships: Therapy offers a reparative relational experience—a model of what it feels like to be held, not just relied upon. The therapeutic relationship offers an incredibly unique, healing dynamic. Part of your therapist’s role is to hold space for you, guide you towards celebrating your needs and gently support you in safely challenging yourself. Often this is a dynamic that feels novel to eldest parentified daughters. The very relationship-and the lived experience that this kind of care is possible-is part of the medicine.
  

If you resonate with the role of the eldest parentified daughter, know that you can learn new ways of showing up for yourself and in the world. The skills you have developed to stay safe have gotten you this far, but they’ve also taken so much from you. Therapy can help you reclaim your life and learn how to show up as fully yourself-perhaps in ways you never thought were possible. 

If you’d like to speak with one of our therapists who specializes in supporting eldest parentified daughters, reach out today for a consultation.

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