There is something so specific and underappreciated about the eldest daughter. Not least because she’s raised to be a hyper-independent woman who works surprisingly well under pressure, but also because she gets the tea on the traumatic family lore from a young age, while learning how to deal with children as a child herself. She can befriend the entire world, but her close circle of friends can be counted on one hand. She is her mother’s sympathetic therapist and her father’s son he never had, whether he prefers boys or not. She is her sibling’s protector and is treated like an adult as a child, and a child as an adult. Her empathy can run for miles, but she’s always racing to catch up with it. She avoids playing the victim, staying silent while being a safe space for her loved ones. She comes from a long line of headstrong, outspoken women: weakness is intolerable, vulnerability is awkward. She cannot afford to have a panic attack, or it will become a joke. However, she wishes to break the cycle through a grand total of two ways: by doing things differently, or simply not doing them at all.

The phenomenon is compounded when you add an ethnic background into the mix, particularly South Asian. It’s a uniquely desi girl experience to help set the table with the other women, while the men sit in the living room and philosophically sip on cha, arguing over politics or land back home. And even if a girl’s education is paramount, which it often is, familial responsibility will always be the end goal. Life starts to resemble a predictable timeline of eras once you hit a certain age: reserved, quiet child; moody, aggressive teenager; intelligent, ambitious young woman; then finally, married mother. Distrust of men is unfortunately ingrained, but so is calling out their behaviour. 

Things only get messier when it comes to mental health. While younger generations of parents are more sensitive to such issues, older ones are less so. My late diagnosis of ADHD and autism put my experience of school into a startlingly clear perspective; I will always wish it was acknowledged and respected earlier, not just by the adults around me, but by myself. I realised I had subconsciously absorbed the stigma, and have been learning to unlearn the shame and disdain ever since. So, I try to explain to my mother that my four year old cousin will never ‘outgrow’ his own autism; he will simply be forced to adapt to a world that refuses to adapt for him. 

People often experience things so that future generations do not have to. I take pride in knowing that I will be there to support him in ways others cannot, instinctively taking on the role of an older sister he can always turn to. My cousins and I also take pride in knowing that, as girls who grew up together while our families grew apart, we will remain in each other’s lives. Many South Asian kids have also grown up around women who are constantly put down, whether it’s by their husbands, their in-laws or their own family. Plenty married young, burdened by the insurmountable expectation of moulding their husbands into better men while maintaining a perfect family and home. 

Visiting an aunt’s house usually involves delicious curry, telling everyone how uni is going, and an hour of relatives standing at the door yapping after commenting how late it is and that they should get home. But for her, it also involves a whole day of cleaning the house from top to bottom, cooking in the kitchen for twenty guests, and then sitting down last at the dinner table, the final person to eat – sometimes she only eats after everyone has had their fill. Dirty plates are snatched from my hands and I see her callused fingers starting to wrinkle under the hot water; I’m a guest who’s not expected to do this right now, but in the foreseeable future I will become her. A young girl who sees the women in her life doing everything themselves – from the emotional to the physical labour – often learns to do the same. So, I think that more and more young women feeling disinclined to have families of their own is a reasonable reaction. There’s a quote from Bonnie Burstow’s Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence that I had read a couple years ago. It always hits hard whenever it resurfaces online:

“Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.”

It’s an uncomfortable truth for many. It’s also something I cannot unhear in every family dinner, every video call, every story about my parents’ lives before me. And now that I’m older, I can call this out instead of joining in on the joke, because there is nothing amusing about mocking the woman who raised me. It’s all the more unnerving hearing negative self-talk from female relatives who have internalised years of mistreatment and disrespect. University becomes a chance for women to understand who they are outside of the home, and who they can be when they cross paths with peers from different walks of life. It’s also a chance to find people just like you, as I found my best friend and fellow eldest daughter at St Andrews, whose own experiences and personal growth have intertwined with mine. This, I think, is what saves an eldest daughter from her mother’s fate. Opening up, revisiting embedded cultural norms and beliefs and, above all, choosing herself first. But whether that’s through doing things differently or not doing them at all is entirely up to her.