Daughters Carry A Type Of Emotional Labor No One Else Does — And There's A Name For It

If you feel like the default organizer, mediator, planner and emotional support system for your family, you might be “daughtering.”

The work of staying connected typically doesn’t happen by accident. It’s carried ― quietly and consistently ― by someone, and more often than not, that someone is a daughter.

“Daughtering is the often invisible logistical, emotional, cognitive and identity work adult daughters do to keep relationships and family life running smoothly,” Allison M. Alford, a communication researcher who studies family relationships, told HuffPost. “But rarely does anyone call this type of connecting ’work.’”

In her book, “Good Daughtering: The Work You’ve Always Done, the Credit You’ve Never Gotten, and How to Finally Feel Like Enough,” Alford describes daughtering as work because it demands valuable resources like time, energy and money.

“Daughtering work is the checking in, the remembering, the anticipating, the smoothing over, the staying connected,” Alford said. “Daughtering includes tasks that are easy to notice, but it’s also the intricate, connective tissue in relationships that’s hard to define.”