‘Eldest daughter syndrome’ is gaining a lot of attention on social media – with symptoms like being responsible, reliable, efficient and a people-pleaser strongly associated.

In the Irish Examiner, journalist Adele Miner wrote about how first-born girls take on more duties than their younger siblings.

On Moncrieff, Ms Miner said she found the topic interesting because “it kind of bridges on the idea of nature versus nurture.”

“I'm the eldest daughter of two, there's about five or six years between myself and my youngest brother,” she said.

“In my particular case, I would say that my eldest daughter syndrome is kind of based more on nature rather than nurture.

“For me, my mom never really placed many pressures or responsibilities directly on me in terms of kind of caring for my brother's well-being or anything like that but rather, it was more intrinsic within me to want to take care of my brother and really relish in that big sister role.

“I was about five when he was born and I think suddenly the ‘I'm a big sister’ snapped in pretty much straight away and I kind of wanted to be the protector, the teacher, the doer and I'm sure, the boss-er, from his point of view.”

Responsibility placed on them

Ms Miner said her experience was a lot younger to her interviewees, where they had a lot of responsibility placed on them by parents.

“My situation was a little bit different from others, wherein other eldest daughters’ kind of had more responsibility directly placed onto them, where they had to bring siblings to school, maybe take care of them over the summer while parents were working and things like that,” she said.

“It really impacted how they grew up, basically, and it kind of moulded them to have certain characteristics that they carry throughout adulthood, which I feel like I also have.”

"Suffering from burnout"

Ms Miner said there are both good and bad characteristics associated with elder daughter syndrome.

“It teaches you certainly to be responsible, reliant, efficient, independent - they're all good traits that everybody would like to have,” she said.

“But then I also think there is kind of some negative ones, maybe like people pleasing, a need to be perfect, or kind of feeling responsible for the emotions of other people around you and that can kind of lead to certain things like burnout.

“For the piece that I wrote, I spoke with Dr Lorraine Lynch and she told me that she has actually seen a lot of eldest daughters present to her over the years in her clinic.

"They're suffering from burnout or just basically anxious women whose nervous systems are so attuned to the kind of emotional states of everybody else around them, they are constantly in this kind of fight or flight mode.”

Ms Miner said often times, parents can lean on eldest children and use them as another parent – a person to vent to, to talk about money or work problems, etc.

She said this makes the eldest child mature a lot faster and have a different outlook to their siblings.

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A mother argues with her daughter. Image: Kateryna Onyshchuk / Alamy Stock Photo