The Conundrum of the Eldest Daughter

-- By ArielBenson - 29 Nov 2024

Introduction: The Pull Between Family & Career

The eldest girl has always been expected to do everything right. Get an education, get a pretty job, and get a pretty relationship and kid all before time runs out. The negotiations and beratement remain a part of every Thanksgiving and Christmas conversational repertoire. She has gotten used to the questions and probes into her life. Armor made and maintained over the years has gotten her this far. However, for the first time in her life, younger siblings and cousins begin to create nuance in their lives and build their own futures. Some rarely come around, running after their own adventures with their newly gained finances and freedom. Others are taking their own relationships seriously. While the pressure on the eldest to accomplish the goals of every generation that came before her begins to subside, the complications across the family begin to grow. For the first time in her life, the eldest daughter is experiencing what its like to be impacted by her siblings and cousins’ life choices. Diversion has seemed to take the spotlight off of her life (thank God), but it has seemingly created angst and chaos for own life planning and decision making.

Diversion Complicates the Family Dynamic

Building the family doesn’t always make the family closer. Her younger brother is planning an engagement and eventual small family in aa city not where parents live. She notices that the plans begin to disregard his family and begin to include his future fiancés. His decision to stay in Texas and not follow his sister to the northeast means his projection for “getting serious” is a little bit earlier than hers. He’s determined, regardless of the protest coming from his elder, to continue on in the pursuit of planting his own roots.

Her Choice

Luckily, the eldest has relied a lot on building in her own life. After all, she was looked up to to create the blueprint for her brother and cousins. She is the standard, mostly. She can lean on her work, her schooling, her hobbies to keep her busy. The blueprint hasn’t completely been completed. She can still go for Partner at her future firm or maybe head of governmental agency that will still be around in ten years. She is not not interested in relationships, but she knows what she’s good at: building.

The Curse

What she did not realize is that she has a super-power or burden that no one else in her family’s Gen Z has, a commitment to include everyone who has come along. The siblings, cousins, step-cousins, play-cousins, and close family friends are under her domain. She, like her elders, saw everyone join the clan. She expects that everyone, through even divorce or death, will maintain strong relationships with the family. Her responsibility, so she feels, is to keep everyone at close difference. She sees the matriarch of the family biggening to lose her energy vis-à-vis hunting descendants down. It will soon be up to the following generations to ensure stability. Somehow, someway, something will have to give.

Reflection

Over time, pressures old and new can alter a person’s life and plans. Capable, stable, and supported individuals will fare relatively well, however that doesn’t mean that life is exactly how they would want to be. What society expects of the eldest girl is often a conundrum, even if the conflict doesn’t look the same for all. Some are trying to mitigate the conflict of moving away to better finances for family and maintaining relationships at home. Others are expected to address and handle the family’s trauma and effects while simultaneously extending the legacy of the successful women in her life. The chaos of others molds her life, and she is required to make something beautiful from it. She will do her best. Her best will be enough. It’ll have to be, because she’s the only one who knows exactly what is needed for herself, her family, and her own journey.

Professor Moglen: I wrote this piece to reflect on my own life and to address something that I’ve never experienced be explicitly described. Please let me know if this concept does not meet the brief.

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