What Does it Mean to be a Good Daughter? with Dr. Allison Alford

Dr. Allison Alford, PhD, a researcher and the author of Good Daughtering, joins Anita and Zara to discuss the concept of daughtering, its emotional labor, and its significance across generations. Discover how recognizing and valuing daughtering can transform relationships, foster resilience, and expand our understanding of womanhood.

Key Topics

• The concept of daughtering and its origins
• Emotional labor involved in daughtering
• Generational differences in daughtering expectations

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to Good Daughtering

02:55
The Concept of Daughtering

05:27
The Emotional Labor of Daughters

08:20
Generational Perspectives on Daughtering

11:01
Recognizing and Valuing Daughtering

13:55
The Role of Communication in Daughtering

16:40
Navigating Complex Family Dynamics

19:04
Parenting Daughters in a New Era

21:23
Exploring Immigrant Experiences and Cultural Identity

22:33
Creating Personal Rubrics for Daughtering

24:38
The Dynamics of Sibling Relationships in Daughtering

27:54
Navigating Changing Family Roles and Responsibilities

32:27
The Burden of Daughtering in a Systemic Context

35:02
The Essence of Daughtering Beyond Loss

36:39
The Lifelong Journey of Daughtering

40:56
Empowering Women Through Good Daughtering

Topics covered in this episode: daughtering, emotional labor, women, generational roles, family dynamics, recognition, mental health, identity, feminism, social support

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Transcript

Speaker 2 0:03

Welcome to the Millennial Sandwich, a space for real conversations about millennials in the middle. Not just of our own lives, but also of a caregiving sandwich. I'm Dr.

Speaker 1 0:11

Anita Chandra, a geriatrician and expert in elder care. And I'm Zara Hanawalt, a parenting journalist and expert in American motherhood. And even we don't have all the answers. Join us as we figure out life in the middle. Hello, everybody. We have a very exciting guest today, Dr. Alison Alford. She is the author of Good Daughtering, and we are so excited to have her today. So, hi, Dr. Alford. Can you tell everyone a little bit about yourself and your work?

Speaker 0:36

Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I am a millennial and I am a daughter. I'm a mom and a wife and a worker. I'm a professor at Baylor University, and I'm a thinker. And so I put together a book called Good Daughtering that's based on 10 years of research that I started in my doctoral degree. And I just was noticing this kind of thing that other women were experiencing too. Um and I wanted to put a name to it. And so that is why I wrote the book Good Daughtering. Did you coin the term daughtering? I didn't make up the word, but I popularized it being used in this context. So there are others who have used the word like I found all the way back in the 1800s in a poem. So, you know, no claim to actually creating the word. But I'm the one who decided to use it in this active way, the same way we might talk about mothering or parenting, and thinking, you know, let's discuss being a daughter with an active, conscious, agentic choice.

Speaker 2 1:40

Yeah, Alice one, I have to tell you, when I first came across your work on daughtering, I felt like I was seen in a way I wasn't expecting, like holding up a mirror, and it made me really reflect on how much of my identity was shaped by being a good daughter. Um, so we're really honored to have you here to talk about what that means. And I'm curious, how did you find your way into studying daughtering and emotional labor? Was that something was personal or did you just start noticing patterns in your research?

Speaker 2:07

It's such a great question, you know, and I think that as women, we all have these powers of noticing and seeing things and recognizing something's happening, but we don't always have the language to discuss that thing, which of course is why I love podcasts and TikTok, uh, because we're these are the spaces where we can get together with our peers and find that language. But basically, I grew up in a family that was always talking about talking. My mom was a marriage and family therapist, and and and you know, I want to give her credit because she had a very difficult childhood and life and family, and she went to go get that education to break some long-standing generational patterns. And myself and my sister, older sister, we benefited from that. So I kind of had a leg up in that regard that I was already through childhood somebody who was noticing how people interacted, what do people talk about, what do they not talk about, and um and so then I went on to do my graduate studies in a field called communication studies. It's kind of like a cousin to psychology, and but in this field, we explore how do people communicate about the things that they care about or how do they create meaning when they communicate, and which I love because what it means is that when I say something to you guys or you say something back to me, we've created something brand new between us and understanding. And it was there in that graduate work that I began to think a lot more about women and women's work and what counts as work and what is the language that we have for discussing all the things that women contribute, but don't ever really get highlighted as special or important, like some of the other roles that we have, like mothering roles do.

Speaker 1 3:59

What does it mean to be a good daughter, in your opinion?

Speaker 4:03

I love this question because I think each of us gets to try to figure that out and define it for ourselves, but we can also agree that for some reason we have a sense of what it should be, and that comes from a lifetime of experiences. And if nobody ever defines for us what is a good daughter, or we don't define it for ourselves, we're really just kind of absorbing an idea from culture. And our society, you know, we're recording this in the United States, and I'm a millennial, so in my generation, our society says that daughters are um people who show up. We take care of our family, we monitor, we go out in advance of a problem and try to remove that problem. We soothe and smooth and we make sure things are taken care of as sort of a gift to our loved ones. But so many of those things are invisible things because they happen in the mind or they happen, you know, with our time and energy, but they're not visible like if you brought someone groceries, that would kind of be like, oh, look, the neighbor could see you bringing groceries, but we do all these other showing up things, and a good daughter is supposed to do that and more, I think.

Speaker 2 5:17

Yeah, that's so interesting. You say that I just happened to just be talking to my sister-in-law, she just had a baby three weeks ago. So she's got a lot on her plate, of course. And one of the things she said was that was hard about what she's going through is that she felt, she was telling me she felt bad that she hasn't been able to pick up the phone and call her mom as much as she thinks she should. And her mom has even told her, you know what, you just had a baby. Like you don't have to pick up the phone and call me. Five minutes is fine. But she ha feels that she's not doing what she's supposed to do. I just wonder what you what do you think about that? Where does that come from? Is that a millennial thing? Is that just a daughter thing? Why do we feel that sense of like we're not doing enough? Yeah.

Speaker 6:01

You know, it is so interesting you say that she just had a baby because I think that sometimes these role transitions they really bring up for us a lot of angst or anxiety about our other roles. In communication studies, we call these big moments in life turning points. And a turning point could be having a baby, getting married, going to college, but it could also just be like when you had a really big fight and that fight stands out in your mind for decades, like things changed at that time. But what is happening is that she's experiencing a role transition in one part of her life, and it's making her think about these other roles and want to not drop the ball. I mean, maybe she's feeling the same way about her colleagues at a workplace, or maybe she's feeling the same way about her siblings or in her marriage or partnership, you know, I have to make sure not to drop these things. And women often are told, you know, that we can't drop the ball. Like we have to mentally and emotionally always be available and be present. So then we have a tough time giving ourselves a break, even if other people around us, like our mom, is being generous and saying, girl, don't worry about it. We are like, but I'm worried because it's so ingrained in our body to do this level of heightened monitoring. We don't know how to accept it for ourselves instead.

Speaker 1 7:23

Do you think millennials feel a greater sense of that just because of all the messages that we receive both in real life and now on social media too?

Speaker 7:32

I think that one thing we can observe is that generationally, you know, the generations of daughters are different and behave differently. And so millennials, I don't know if all of them, all of us, but we like I have a boomer mom and dad. And so a lot of the way that I have learned to be a woman, to be a worker, to be a wife, to be a mother, to be a neighbor, to be a voter, these are lessons I learned from my boomer parents. And so millennials are in a situation where we're always having to decide do I repeat the pattern that I've been learning every day of my life since childhood with these boomers in my life? Or do I see new ways that I like better? Maybe my neighbor next door is a Gen X, or maybe my neighbor on the other side is a Gen Z. That's in the neighborhood I live in, I have one of every generation all around me. And I observe them, and that's when I kind of have to decide like, do I want a new pattern? Do I want a new way in my life? Um, but those things when I see other families or other people behaving, those are still a limited amount of observations on that experience. Whereas the boomer parents I've had have been in my life every day for I'm 43, so I'm a I'm a I'm a grand millennial. But, you know, I so I think that it's important to say generationally, we're each of us in a unique spot in the same way our boomer parents are uniquely impacted by the Great Depression. And, you know, Gen Z is gonna be impacted by, you know, the political climate that we're in. And so each generation has their own contextual things to deal with.

Speaker 2 9:09

And how has studying this academically changed the way you daughter?

Speaker 9:15

Oh, yes. So one of the things at the beginning of all of this, in when I was in grad school, and this is over about yeah, over 10 years ago, maybe 12 years ago, I was coming up with the words and the language, and in a way, it's like creating a just a brand new word and trying to get people to think like, yeah, that's not a silly word or funny or ridiculous word, that's a valid word. And I have been really grateful for the support that I've received. Um so in my family, one of the first things I I told my mom about this, and I was like, daughters are doing work, and daughters deserve to be recognized and thanked and praised. And she immediately started saying to me things like, Thank you for daughtering me today, or that was such good daughtering. And while it was a little bit silly, cringe, you know, she was very earnest in wanting to uh help me see within my work what could happen if we did that, if we talk to each other in that way. And I recognize that I like the gold stars. When someone says to me, good job, your work matters, it has value, it is visible to me. I feel like doing more of it. I feel like I have fulfilled part of my life's purpose, or you know, there's just it's a lot more meaningful. And in many ways, that experience made me want to give that to other women. It made me want to have other women have their daughtering recognized, valued, praised, celebrated, not because you want to do more or less of it or because you're complaining, but because it just matters. And when we know that we matter and that we bring value to our various roles, I think it expands our humanity. We flourish in different ways by leaning into these different parts of who we are.

Speaker 2 11:00

Yeah. We really just don't hear that ever. I mean, I I always tell Zara, my I'm a geriatrician, I'm a clinical geriatrician. So I see a lot of older adults who are cared for by their daughters or daughters-in-law or any woman in their life. And I make a point to say, you know, you're you're you're a really good daughter, and it almost always evokes an emotional response because they've never heard that before. And it's just sort of expected and not something that we're used to telling women, like, hey, you're you're doing a good job doing this thing that's really hard and heavy. Yeah.

Speaker 11:41

Yeah. And that's something we can shout out right now for all your listeners. Like, text someone today and tell them they're being a good daughter. It could be your best friend from high school and you see how she's caring for her dad or stepdad. It could be your own sister-in-law, it could be your sibling, it could be your mom taking care of the generation above, you know, but it really does fill up our soul to have recognition for this really important role that we play. And it's just so strange to me, you know, that so many of us, our daughtering role, it falls to the back. It goes on the back burner. And yet it's such a key piece of our identity and who we are and how we function in the world, how we got to where we are. And once we kind of praise that part of ourselves, we're like, yeah, I am doing it. You know, I and I can feel good about that. And I can see why maybe these other parts of me are, you know, not always getting Max attention because I'm giving attention to this daughter part when I need to.

Speaker 1 12:41

I think it's so interesting, too, that millennials tend to be far more expressive and kind of earnest than a lot of other generations. And I think because of that, we tell each other all the time, you're a great mom. You're doing such a good job in motherhood. But we don't really hear you're a great daughter because boomers, I don't think they had as much language around praise that we millennials really have.

Speaker 13:04

Yeah, that's true. Language around praise. And so when we combine that kind of the Venn diagram of language of praise with language of daughtering, and that gives us an opportunity. It gives us a new toolkit. And I think that what it brought what you're bringing up is that we also learn about good daughtering from a daughterhood of women who are doing this alongside us, who are battling alongside us. When we have a wedding, we think about what did my friends do with their mom and dad? Did they walk down the aisle? Did they get a candle? Did they get to come to the back room? You know, same thing when we have a baby. We're like, well, what did my friends do with their mom or dad, or stepmom or stepdad, or, you know, ex-stepmom who wants to come? I mean, there's a lot of family dynamics, right? And so we get to share in our daughtering with our peers, and that's such an untapped resource. Sometimes we're thinking, well, if I want to fix my daughtering, I've got to fix my mom or I've got to fix my dad. And the truth is that sometimes we just need to share our experience. And I think, you know, your viewers and you guys probably are aware of that's part of fourth wave feminism. You know, the online spaces, TikTok podcasts, the way that we talk about ourselves in our Instagram posts, these are ways that we're spreading a message globally about who we are as women in a complex and full way. And I think when we acknowledge our daughtering, we reduce the conversation that we have to be maternal, that you know, and we bring up that we can be anything and we have so many different important parts to us. And our daughter part is one that we can be proud of, we can honor, we can also complain about, we can be a porcupine about if we want. We can just bring that message up and share it with others, and that daughterhood will then show up for us and be like, yes, me too, and same, and I've been there. And that just keeps that relationship going where we feel good and fulfilled. Can you tell us more about what it means to be a porcupine? And as a Yes, yes. I'm gonna raise my hand and be like, you're seeing her right here. You because um, and I had this some great conversations with women where they used different words about themselves. One woman called herself the bully daughter, one woman um called herself the pushy one. And they identified, these women identified that being a daughter is not about being sweet, it's not about just giving away parts of yourself and being a doormat and letting people walk over you and just doing, doing, doing endlessly for people. Part of being a daughter is bringing up the difficult things that no one else will talk about, where you're like, I know there's this family secret, and we're gonna get it out now because our generation doesn't want to do secrets like that. Or where you say, you know what, you weren't very nice to your brother, my uncle, you know, so-and-so, who came by. If you were nicer to him, everybody would have had a better experience. Or you say, you know, you were supposed to go get your blood pressure checked and you've delayed that six months, and I'm mad at you about that because I don't want to have to care for you because you screwed up your blood pressure. We can push back, we can be grumpy and disgruntled and have that be a valid way of daughtering. And also what we have to tell ourselves is I don't have to be pleasant to be loved. I don't have to be sweet to be worthy. I am a member of this family, and I can make waves on purpose for important changes to occur, and that is good daughtering.

Speaker 1 16:40

I'm learning I'm a porcupine daughter. What's interesting is I'm an only child, and I think I am all of the above at any given time. And Anita is not an only child, but she's an only daughter. Are you do you have siblings, Allison?

Speaker 16:56

Yes, I have an older sister. She's older by two years. But, you know, I think that the the only child, the only daughter is such a heavy space to be in. I want to give recognition to the only's that, you know, because we we have a lot of talk about the eldest daughter and how hard that is. And it is hard, but I think that we have more conversation coming about other challenging experiences. And one of those is the only. And the weight of the needs and the future and the looming pressure or the intensity of not being able to share with others something because nobody else is your parents' kid is so intense, and we don't give enough compassion for how hard that is and how you're doing all the daughtering all all by yourself. We're dealing with the tension of the undone things, the things that cannot or don't get done. So that's really hard. I want to give props to you for that. Thank you. I needed to hear that.

unknown 17:54

Yeah.

Speaker 2 17:56

And I think, you know, both of us, Zara and I both have a daughter and a son. So for those of us who are raising daughters, how do we preparent them without unconsciously passing down the same emotional expectations? That's always on my mind.

Speaker 18:11

Yeah. Yeah, I have a son and a daughter. So my son's currently a senior in high school and uh my daughter's a sophomore. And so I'm very aware of parenting both of them intentionally into sunning and daughtering in the future. And so it's a good point to pause and say, you know, I think sunning is a thing and it's important. And maybe more millennials and Gen Z men are leaning into that and I love it. And somebody needs to write the book on that. Okay. So I'm here for it. And I don't want anyone to think that we're forgetting men, but the key difference for women and for daughters is the expectations, the high expectations. And yet they're often not voiced explicitly, like I want you to come visit X number of times a year. So then we're just left to this mystery sauce of what will be good enough. And we ourselves always move that goalpost, you know. So we're we're like, was that good enough? Maybe I should try harder. You know, I think that's very millennial. And so what I'm trying to train my children is I'm I'm thinking a couple of things. One, I want it to be taught, not caught, what I expect from them. I think many parents are boomer parents, the greatest generation parents, they want their kids to go off and be free and find that American dream or live your own family or move away, but they don't express that. And so then we don't know if we really can or if they're just saying that. So I'm trying to give my children messages of what I do want from them, and I want them to believe me, and I want them to come around this amount, but not come around this amount. I want them to worry about me in this this way, but also not in this way. And and each of us gets to decide that in our family system. So if you have a tradition that's important to you, like a religious holiday that's like, this is our thing, or you just love Fourth of July or Memorial Day weekend, you're like, all I want is for you to come every year to Memorial Day weekend, or once a year I want us to go on a cruise, or whatever your family gets to decide, telling your kids this is what's important to me or our family, these traditions. And also here's what's not important. So don't let anyone believe that that is something that we care about. And um, and I think we have to teach our sons and our daughters very carefully how to treat us and let them know that we see that they're practicing it now in childhood, but that they don't have this, you know. I've written this book, but I have I have children who are minors, and I've tried to let both of my children know. This doesn't apply to you yet. This is an adulthood when you're independent and have agency, but I want you to, but you can know now what to think about for when you're an adult.

Speaker 2 20:56

I love that direct communication, and it's so different than how I was raised. And I know Zara and I were both children of immigrants, and we come from cultures where that it's sort of implied, and what is expected of a daughter is it was never said, but completely understood just by what we saw around us. And I'm wondering how you kind of see that with different cultures.

Speaker 21:23

I had so many wonderful women share their stories with me of being first generation immigrants, second, third generation, and immigrating from different different cultures and contexts. So one woman shared her story with me of being uh a first generation Mexican American, whereas another individual was telling me about her family coming from China. There's going to be a shared immigrant experience to the US while also being completely different. You know, what you might be expected to do if you come from Pakistan is totally different than if you've come from South America. And so, what we're what you're talking about, I think, is a lot. Of thought work and a lot of communication work for us to decide what do I like about my family? What do I like about my culture? What do I want to keep? And then on the balance, what do I not want to keep? Or what things do I think are not from culture, they're from personality or they're from the patriarchy. And we're going to get rid of those things and we're going to drop those things and not let anyone tell me, oh, but that's from our heritage. No, it's not. That's from patriarchy. So no, thank you. But what I advocate for in my book is we have to create a rubric for ourselves. Because otherwise, that again, that goalpost is always moving. We're never sure what's good, what's good enough. And if we create an idea for ourselves, what am I willing to do? What do I want to do? What makes a good life? So I want to celebrate this holiday with my family, or I want to go to our annual neighborhood bash, or I want to stay in touch with my aunts and uncles and talk to them on behalf of my mom or grandma. I want to do those things. I like being in touch with those. And then we also need to decide what we're not going to be doing. So we can make a stopdoing list. I'm going to stop monitoring my mom's stress level while I'm around her and realize that she's capable of monitoring that. And I'm going to leave that to her. And I'm just not going to do that anymore. But we have to make a rubric. I always go with rubric because I'm a professor. And so I give rubrics for assignments. And a rubric lets someone know how to make a 100, an A plus plus. And make your rubric for you, for your family, for your culture, for your family's needs. And then once you see, okay, if I did all these things, I'd feel like a good daughter with a good life. Then aim for a B plus. Don't aim for an A plus. Aim for a B plus. And that's hard for many of us, I think, millennials. But thinking to yourself, by not trying to be perfect as a daughter, I'm reserving resources for these other important places in my life. And so I'm not failing as a daughter. I'm only B plusing as a daughter. And I'm reserving some of these resources for the other people who deserve my good attention too.

Speaker 2 24:12

What do you think about having these conversations and creating your rubric with a sibling? Because I think part of it is that it's hard when I personally feel like I pick up more of the daughtering because I know that my sibling doesn't necessarily have that same feeling of doing and not not doing enough. And it's just I wonder how much of this we should be discussing and who's gonna take on what, or is it just personal?

Speaker 24:40

It's both. It's both personal and shared, right? Just that in the same way that being part of a family is both individual to that family and also it's it's so important to society. Families are the building blocks of our social system and how we care for others and how we um, you know, find support or love in times of crisis. So one of the things that's really important, let's let's take me and my sister, my older sister. We get along great, we love each other really well, but we are completely different as daughters. And we also have different contexts. She lives very near to my parents down the street, and I live farther away where I can't just show up on their doorstep. And so the first part of it is that I had I have to see, this is in the first part of the book, what is daughtering? What are all the ways of doing daughtering? And not just counting the ways that I am doing daughtering as valid, but counting the ways that she's doing daughtering as valid also. And then I have to decide for myself what is good enough. I'm not gonna let my my sibling guilt me into anything or my parent guilt me into anything. I'm gonna decide what is good enough, what is a good life and a good purpose. And then I think that third part is communicating it with others, with your parent and with your siblings. So my sister and I, in the last two years-ish, made a partnership about which things we were each gonna do, and we are going to see each other's things as valid and important. So she does stuff like take a meal down there or pick them up and drive them to a family event. And my parents do a lot more stuff with her family and kids than they do with mine. And I am over here going, good job, you did it. You picked them up, you spent time with them, you went to lunch, you went to a breakfast, and I'm the emotional daughter. I make calls, I ask questions, I'm a porcupine, I say things, I bring up generational secrets and problems and drama and trauma. And then I hang up the phone and I'm like, Because, you know, and so she, my sister, validates for me that that is helpful and important. And I validate for her that that's helpful and important. And by partnering together, we reduce conflict between us that helps us to feel like as our parents age, we're gonna be able to tackle the new things that come up because we're not resenting each other. We're cheering for each other to use our own skill set and our own contexts. So if she said to me, My battery's low, I'd be like, I got you. And so when we partner with our siblings, we can multiply the impact. Or if you're an only, partner with your aunts, partner with your uncles, ask your own romantic partner to help you, call up the neighbors of your family and partner with somebody who will look out for your parents with you.

Speaker 1 27:31

I will say that is the one nice thing about coming from the culture we come from. We're both Indian, is there is that extended network of aunts and family friends and community members who are willing to step in. But do you think there's value in clearly delineating the roles that each person can play? Or do you think it's more fluid and we just have to kind of step in as needed and as we see fit?

Speaker 27:54

I'd say that it comes down to personality. You know, if you are like, I need a rule, I need an expectation, I need to tell you the rule and expectation, and that's all that that I can, you know, that's what makes me feel reduced by anxiety, then do that. But also on the same token, we're aging, our parents are aging constantly, our children are growing up. So that's what I describe as the kinship shift in my book, which is kind of like our parents are this high place, and then over life, they they kind of their power goes down, and we start at this low power place and our power goes up. And it could be the same with finances. It could be their finances are high and then they go down as they go towards elderhood. I mean, there's a lot of things that are shifting over time. And so a hard and fast rule may work for one year and then not work anymore. Because we do have to say to ourselves, and I address this also in the book, who is my parent now? Who am I right now? And I can't just use old perspectives on them to address this. But I also don't have to do daughtering any way that anybody else is doing it. I can make it work for me, even if my friends think that's silly. Uh, it's it's okay because I can say, this is what works for me. This is how I make daughtering efficient.

Speaker 2 29:13

I think that's the flip side of seeing everything on social media, right? We on one hand, we are talking about all the good things we're doing and validating each other, but on the other, it's really hard to see that person, you know, bought their parents a house or took took them on this vacation and then comparing and feeling like, am I not a good daughter? Should I be doing those things?

Speaker 1 29:36

Yeah, or like in our culture, it's common to live with parents even after you're married and have your own families. And I think that can sometimes even make us feel like we're not doing enough.

Speaker 29:46

Yeah. It seems to me like these are, I mean, what we see on Instagram, what we see on Facebook, what we see on, you know, TikTok, Snapchat, wherever you want to go, Pinterest, those all of those things can mess with our head because they are snapshots. And so that's why we have to do the internal work, the thinking work. What is my value? What is my ability? What is what is my opportunity? You know, I don't have house money, but I have vacation money. Or I have take my parents out to dinner money. And I can, I, you know, I can be proud of that. Or maybe I have all that money, but instead of giving it to them now, I'm putting it in a bank account and I'm thinking, yeah, when they're 75, I'll have it ready, but I'm not telling anybody about it now. And uh, and and that's okay. You know, each of us gets to decide. But I I do think that an underrated person that we need to tap into is our partner. And especially if you have a male partner who may not know that much about caring behavior, support behaviors, the pressures that we're under. Or if you have a partner from a different culture, you know, who's like, I can't understand these generations of responsibility or respect needs or religious implications. But I've found that by leaning into asking my husband for help, asking him to listen to what I'm experiencing, asking him for strategies. And so like I try to arm him with tools before we ever go to a family event. And now that my children are getting older, they have responsibilities too. So we're in the car, we're driving to Thanksgiving dinner. And I'm like, okay, what are you gonna do? Okay, what are you gonna do? All right, what are you gonna do? Everybody has their assignment. And so we we have to offload. We have to choose to offload and give ourselves uh, you know, a little bit of grace. But as we're offloading, we're also noticing that's CEO behavior, right? And so it's in a one way I'm getting rid of some, I'm giving someone else some responsibility, but I'm still the I'm still the manager. Uh, and so I'm still I'm still monitoring and making sure. And that's another form of labor. So good job, me.

Speaker 1 32:01

I'm a parenting journalist, so I cover, you know, parenting in America. And I think we all know that there is really no systemic or structural support for parents. But I also think a piece of the conversation we're not having is that there's really no systemic or structural support for daughtering. And elder care is incredibly expensive. It's incredibly inaccessible. Do you think that has added to the load that we carry as daughters in the United States?

Speaker 32:27

It's a such a great topic. And I do cover policy changes and workplace policies, you know, government policies in the book and how systemic changes could make a difference and make a difference in the conversation. But honestly, my favorite person who's covered this topic is Melinda Gates' book, The Moment of Lift. It's a must-read. And it's because she talks about the work of women and girls around the world, and she talks about structural inequalities. And she has in that book an economist who talks about how if we valued the work of women and girls around the world in each country's GDP, we would have some powerhouse economies, but the people who make the counting of the GDP don't add women's work because it's unpaid labor. But it's labor and it's labor that makes our society go. So that's what we call social reproductive labor. And I don't think this is new. I think that it's just something we need to keep bringing to the conversation, and we need to bring different types of social reproductive labor to the conversation. And so for my book and my kind of topic area, I'm trying to get us to see that daughtering is our 20s, our 30s, our 40s, not only when our parents are sick or infirm. But the truth is also that that is daughtering too, and that millennials are facing, you know, boomer parents aging and a healthcare system that's not ready for it, or parents who are not financially ready. And so it gives us a lot of things to be concerned about. And so we're doing the work right now of having this conversation and saying, what could be different that would make this better for the daughters and sons who are picking up that slack as we go go into that phase of life? And in my own family, it's just really valuable to be talking about it out loud. Where do you want to live? Where do you not want to live? What do you want in terms of if you needed something done to your body, you know, washing and this and that, who do you want to do that? Who do you not want to touch you? And having those conversations that are often embarrassing or awkward, or or somebody might be like, we don't need to talk about that now. That's not happening yet. But being the porcupine and doing it anyway, so that you can have a little bit of clarity about what's expected of you and you can let your parents know what you will not be doing because it doesn't align with the context that you're living in or the battery that you have.

Speaker 2 34:58

Can you tell us about your book, Who Is It For? And what can people learn?

Speaker 35:02

Yes. Okay, good daughtering. This is the book, and it's out now. And this book is for women who need a little bit of relief, who want to be able to talk about all the complexities of being a woman and the things that we're doing that never get any credit. So this book is for if you are a woman, if you love a woman, if you have women in your life and you want to understand them. And um, every woman is a daughter from the day she's born to the day she dies. So, what I wanted to do in this book is not only talk about these ideas, but offer resources. So at the end of every chapter, there's activities, there's checklists and quizzes, there's prompts for talking to your family members, for setting boundaries, there's prompts for creating new traditions and legacies. Um, so it's it should be something that's active. So I want women to read it together and do these activities together and share them with one another. But ultimately, I think when we talk about some of these things, it can kind of bring up this idea of like, I hadn't thought about that. And now that I think about it, I'm like, but the overall experience of what I have learned is that when we start talking about this, we feel better. We feel a weight lifted, we have language to discuss what we've already been going through. And that helps us to be more resilient and to flourish. And that's what I want for women to tap into our daughtering identity and to let it heal and flourish so that we can have better relationships and better lives.

Speaker 1 36:30

What was interesting that you just said is that we're daughters from the time we're born to the time we die. What does it mean to daughter after you've lost your parents?

Speaker 36:39

Yeah, that's always a big um question. Like, well, I must not be a daughter anymore. But the part of daughtering that goes on after our parent is gone is not only identity work, but it's generational work. So as I spoke to women who've lost their parent and I asked them, Do you still feel like a daughter? They said, Yes, I'm still living out their legacy. I'm cooking their favorite recipes, I'm telling the kids and the grandkids about them. And many of us have these generational family stories, important stories of our lineage and our people and what those people have done, or religious practices or um, you know, belief systems and values that just live within our little group. And I think that that is part of the work that daughters do. And so being a daughter is not just about being in front of my parent and doing something with them in that moment. It is part of who I am. And when I tap into that, think about it, give it space in my mind, give it honor in my life, I'm doing daughtering. Um, and so a metaphor that I make in the book is about like being a gardener, you know, and so if you're a gardener and you're in your garden, you're doing gardening right then. But then when there's weeds, you're doing gardening. When you're at the bookstore and you're buying a book about gardening, you're a gardener. When you go to your gardening, you know, wine night and all the gardeners talk about gardening, you're gardening. If you fly to New York and your garden's back in Texas, you're still a gardener. And I think that you make a TikTok about gardening, you're doing gardener stuff. And we have to tap into that with daughtering too. I am not only doing daughtering when I am face to face with my parents. I'm doing it all the time. And that's an important thing that I do to spread the message of the beauty of being a daughter, the the honor and the privilege and the connection, as well as the responsibility and the connection that we have from generations past to present.

Speaker 2 38:38

I'm so glad you said that. I had never really thought about that before. My dad died um a little over two years ago. And I until just now, I don't think I realized how my my identity as my father's daughter has actually increased and like been more of a thing than when he was alive. I just kind of making sure my kids know who he is and who he what he believed. Yeah, I I that's really powerful. I just never thought about it that way.

Speaker 39:09

And it's it's what he believed, but you're saying to them, this is what we believe. This is who we are. This is how it's done, how our family is done. It's the doing of family isn't just in the moment that we are in front of someone and interacting with them. It's talking about who our family is and what we believe in and what we're like. And I've I've really learned a lot about the the death of a parent and identity from my husband who lost his dad. And so while it's a sunning context, it's something firsthand right in my in my home where I can see how that lives out all the time. We make jokes when we see something on TV. When my husband stands in a certain way, I'm like, oh, there's your dad. And so those are things that they they keep going and they will keep going all the way until you die. And um and so you get to be a daughter, you get to be a daughter, and we get to tap into this role that we have. And I think what it does is it expands us as women because so often as women, we think, well, if I'm not married, I'm not woman enough, or if I'm not, you know, got my makeup on, I'm not feminine enough, or if I'm not working like my friends are, then I'm not using my full brain potential. And there's so many places that we are struggling with enoughness. And our daughtering is one of them. And the the way that we make that shift, it's a small shift, but it's how we talk to ourselves and it's how we embrace the choices that we've made are valid. And the choices other women make are also valid, yet different. And and that there's a lot that we bring to the table, even if other people aren't always seeing it. But we can see it and we know it and we can share it with our close friends and family, and that's what makes a good life.

Speaker 2 40:56

Amazing. And what would you say is your millennial sandwich survival tip?

Speaker 41:00

My millennial sandwich survival tip is share the work by making the work visible. So you have to be the one who narrates the work. Tell others what you're doing, what you're thinking, what you're carrying, what you've checked off the list, and say it loud and proud with your full chest. And that's the way that we're gonna get through doing all the work. And of course, there's more work to come. Thank you so much. Yeah, it was a privilege uh being here. I really enjoyed our conversation.