The Most Exploited Person in an African Family Is the Eldest Daughter

I recently became friends with a girl who casually threw into our conversation that she had to attend a PTA meeting. This was shocking to me because she was 27 years old and unmarried. Why was she attending a PTA meeting? She then told me it was for her little sister and proceeded to say all four of her siblings live with her and she’s responsible for them. I could’ve given anything to scream, “Helloooo. Excuse me! Where are your parents?” in that moment, but I understand how these things are, so instead, I gave her a knowing nod and a very big hug before we departed from each other.

Now I cannot stop thinking about the unfairness of it. It is very deeply tragic to watch a young woman become a mother before she gets the chance to become herself.

The parentification of the oldest daughter is one of the most normalized forms of labor in African homes and many collectivist societies. It’s so common that people rarely stop to ask what it actually costs the person carrying it. Oftentimes, we praise the girls who are doing it for being “mature,” and “responsible,” and “strong,” But at what cost?

A 27-year-old woman attending PTA meetings for children she did not give birth to should disturb people more than it does because Imagine spending your teenage years and early adulthood mothering and tending to children. How is this even normalized? One day you are helping your younger sibling with homework and the next day you are paying school fees, providing for six people, attending PTA meetings, sacrificing opportunities, postponing your own life and dreams because you need money to sort out everybody in the house.

And people have the nerve to turn their noses up when first daughters say they are exhausted by the idea of marriage and motherhood. It’s often interpreted as selfishness or feminism gone too far. But how am I supposed to want children when I’ve had them my entire life? I’ve been there and done that and IT WAS NOT FUN.

Some women enter their twenties already burnt out from a motherhood they never consciously chose. While your peers were making mistakes, falling in love recklessly, exploring identity, and dreaming irresponsibly, you were budgeting groceries, solving adult problems, and carrying emotional and financial burdens too heavy for your age. And because you handled it well, people assume you are unaffected by it.

Competence is one of the cruelest traps for women. The better you are at carrying weight, the more weight people hand you.

It’s very heartbreaking because most first daughters do not even resent their siblings. They love them deeply. That is why they sacrifice so much in the first place. The resentment is usually directed at the situation itself. At the unfairness of having your own personhood delayed indefinitely because everybody else’s survival came first. No wonder a lot of first daughters have a hard time finding good partners and settling down because how do you build intimacy when your nervous system has only ever known responsibility? Romance is for people that have finished eating.

People often underestimate what chronic responsibility does to a woman psychologically. It can make rest feel uncomfortable and it leads a woman into believing that her value exists only in usefulness. So even when opportunities for joy, softness, partnership, or self-discovery appear, she struggles to reach for them because somewhere deep down she has internalized the idea that other people’s needs must always come before her own.

I’m not blind to the reality of life and yes, I understand that poverty exists and the reason many first daughters step into this role is because there’s genuinely nobody else who would. Their sacrifices save entire families, but survival should not become a permanent identity. At some point, a woman deserves permission to stop being everybody’s backbone and finally become the center of her own life. But this only happens when the woman develops the spine to choose and save herself.

If you’re a woman who is trapped in this situation, I’m telling you now; do as much as you can, but when you are tired, run away.

This is not your cross to bear.