Growing up as an older brother, author YL Wolfe often felt that the lines between his work and his mother’s work were blurred.
“By the time my younger brother was born when I was about 11 years old, I was overwhelmed with the feeling of responsibility for his well-being. I would sit next to his baby and watch him sleep to make sure he was safe,” Wolfe, the oldest of the four, told HuffPost.
“It wasn’t that I thought my mother couldn’t do it ― but it was more that I felt it.” everything I have family responsibility at that time in my life,” he explained. “Like I was really ‘another mother’, not a big sister.”
In other words, Wolfe is well aware of the “firstborn daughter syndrome.” The Internet is full of thoughts about the plight of older girls and tweets that we ― I may also reveal my bias here ― want to include: “If you are the firstborn and you are a girl you can be given a monetary compensation,” a woman laughed at X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Although “firstborn daughter syndrome” is a pop mental term ― you won’t find it listed as an official diagnosis in the DSM-V ― a new study suggests there may be more science to the pseudo-syndrome than previously thought.
A research group led by the University of California, Los Angeles found that, in some cases, first-born daughters grow up faster, making them help their mothers raise their younger siblings.
In particular, the researchers found a correlation between the first symptoms of puberty in first-born girls and their mothers experienced high levels of pregnancy stress.
Why is the age of adrenal puberty important? Changes in skin (acne, for example) and body hair occur during this time, but so do changes in brain development. Adrenal puberty processes are believed to promote social and cognitive changes; in fact, physical changes are related to mental growth.
When times are tough and mothers are forced into pregnancy, it is in the mother’s best interest that her daughter grow up in the community as soon as possible, said Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook, is one of the study’s authors and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Merced.
“It gives the mother a ‘helper-on-the-nest’ quickly, helping women to keep the last baby alive in harsh environments,” he said.
Layland Masuda via Getty Images
Importantly, adrenal puberty does not include breast development or the onset of menstruation in girls (or testicular enlargement, in the case of boys). The study confirms that girls are mentally mature enough to be able to take care of their younger siblings but are unable to raise their own children, which makes them leave their roles as daughters.
Older siblings don’t seem to have the bait when it comes to this type of parenting: Researchers didn’t find similar results in boys or girls who weren’t firstborn.
“One reason we did not find this in first-born children who are sons may be that male children contribute less to child care than female children, so mothers have little incentive to accelerate their growth in adolescence. ” Hahn-Holbrook explained.
Also, he said, previous research shows that women’s adolescence is more flexible in response to early life events than men’s.
The results of this study, published in the February 2024 issue of Psychoneuroendocrinology (says that five times as fast – or once), was a long time coming: The researchers followed the family for 15 years, from the stage of pregnancy to the teenage years of the babies. .
Researchers recruited women from two fertility clinics in Southern California during first trimester prenatal care visits. On average, the women were 30 years old and pregnant with one child, not twins.
It was their first pregnancy for almost half of the participants. The women did not smoke and did not use steroids, tobacco, alcohol or other recreational drugs during pregnancy. All were over 18 years of age.
At five different stages of pregnancy, women’s stress, anxiety and depression were measured, and then the measurement increased. The depression survey asked women to rate the truthfulness of statements such as “I felt lonely,” while the anxiety questionnaire asked how often they felt other symptoms, such as “jittery.”
Of the children born to this mother, 48% were female and 52% male.
As children get older, the characteristics of adrenal and gonadal puberty are measured differently – things like body hair, skin changes, growth in height or growth, breast development and the onset of menstruation in women and voice changes and facial hair growth in men.
The study also measured childhood adversity to account for other factors known to be associated with early development or early puberty in children, such as the death of a parent or divorce before the age of five and the absence of a father and economic instability at ages 7-9.
Considering all this, they were big girls who grew up fast when their mothers experienced the most stress of pregnancy.
Other studies show that there is a time-in-life that pays for older girls with greater responsibility: A 2014 study found that older girls are more likely to succeed from any type of sibling, but a 2012 study found that those born. they have more opportunities to hold leadership positions.
The older brother kisses the younger one sitting on the old woman. Afro sisters. Curly hair.
Renata Angerami via Getty Images
The findings ring true for Wolfe, the aforementioned writer who said she felt like a second mother to her brothers growing up.
Wolfe said: “I’m not at all surprised by the findings of this study. “My story is a little different – I went through true puberty, not just adrenal puberty, at the age of 12, although I guess I started to know.”
This study is interesting for another reason as well: The findings add to the growing understanding of social scientists of “fetus programming”, an interesting field of study that examines how stress and other psychological and environmental factors women experience during pregnancy affect their children after birth.
“This is the first-of-its-kind research and it’s interesting to look through the evolution,” Molly Fox, UCLA anthropologist and one of the study’s co-authors, said in a press release.
In an interview with HuffPost, Fox explored in detail how fetal programming works.
“One interesting theory is that when you are still a child in your mother’s womb, you get an idea of what the world will be like, and your body can easily change the way you live to suit it. these are the situations you expect to encounter,” he said.
Fox and his fellow authors are glad their work is available for the public to read, especially after following the family for so long. The fact that the findings were published as the tradition about older daughters began was just the cherry on top, especially for Fox, the eldest daughter. (He’s a twin.)
“As an adult, I think it’s an important job in any family because of being able to be close to my mother and being able to help take care of my siblings,” he said.
She spoke like a real daughter. This story first came out HuffPost.