Growing up as the oldest sibling, author Y.L. Wolfe often felt the lines between her role and her mother’s role were blurred.
“By the time my youngest brother was born when I was almost 11, I was overwhelmed with feelings of responsibility for his welfare. I used to sit by his crib and watch him sleep just to make sure he was safe,” Wolfe, the oldest of four, told HuffPost.
“It wasn’t that I thought my mother wasn’t competent ― but more that I felt we were both responsible for the family by that point in my life,” she explained. “As if I was literally ‘other mom,’ rather than big sister.”
In other words, Wolfe is deeply familiar with “eldest daughter syndrome.” The internet is rife with thinkpieces about the plight of oldest daughters and tweets about how we ― I might as well reveal my bias here ― need to unionize: “If you are the oldest sibling and also a girl you may be entitled to financial compensation,” one woman joked on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Though “eldest daughter syndrome” is a pop psychology term ― you won’t find it listed as an official diagnosis in the DSM-V ― a new study suggests that there may be more science to the pseudo-syndrome than previously thought.
A University of California, Los Angeles-led research team found that, in certain instances, first-born daughters tend to mature earlier, enabling them to help their mother rear younger siblings.
Specifically, the researchers found a correlation between early signs of adrenal puberty in first-born daughters and their mothers having experienced high levels of prenatal stress. (They did not find the same correlation in daughters who were not first-born).
Why does age of adrenal puberty matter? Changes in skin (acne, for instance) and body hair happen during this phase, but so do changes in brain development. Adrenal puberty processes are believed to foster social and cognitive changes; basically, superficial physical changes correlate…
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