A psychologist has detailed the eldest daughter’s complex relationship with rest in a viral TikTok video, earning 1.2 million views.
Dr. Ikeranda Smith (@ikerandasmith) highlights the emotional and systemic burdens eldest daughters carry, often leaving them unable to relax or even sleep.
Newsweek spoke to Smith, based in Atlanta, Georgia, and Leah Brown, 38, who has a brother four years her junior, and described the role as “relentless.”
During the July 19 clip, Smith outlines how eldest daughters are conditioned from childhood to be caregivers, providers, and emotional anchors—roles that come at the cost of rest, peace, and self-preservation.
A Childhood of Responsibility, Not Rest
Smith states that the eldest daughter’s struggle with rest begins in childhood, especially in families where the father figure steps away from his role.
In such families, she says, the eldest daughter is thrust into multiple adult roles from a young age. “That means that the eldest daughter has been a provider since she was a child. But not only has she been a provider, she’s also been a caregiver… her siblings are now her children and sometimes even her mother,” she said.
This forced maturity, known in psychology as parentification, often stems from emotionally immature parenting. “The eldest daughter has been parentified since she was a child, so she has more than likely, come from parents who were emotionally immature,” Smith said.
Brown from England, couldn’t agree more with Smith. She said: “The eldest daughter carries the burden of being both child and co-parent.
“We are expected to be the family’s emotional thermostat—reading the room, managing others’ feelings, stepping in when adults abdicate responsibility.
“My younger brother was never expected to mediate our parents’ divorce or manage family crises from thousands of miles away, although he absolutely shared the load in other ways.”
Restlessness as Identity
The consequences of this dynamic extend well into adulthood. “The eldest daughter has never rested, and she’s never rested is because she hasn’t been able to be settled in her body enough to relax and get sleep,” she said.
According to Smith, the eldest daughter often lives entirely in her mind. “She can never turn this thing off enough to settle in her body to relax so that she can get some sleep and rest,” she said.
Why? Because rest itself was weaponized. “She was stepped as lazy, and she was told that she always had to be doing something… this daughter has been working for her family since she was able to get a job,” Smith said.
What’s more, she internalized the belief that productivity equals worth. “When you have been conditioned to feel like you’re only as valuable as you are busy, then for you, rest doesn’t exist. And not only does it not exist, it is absolutely contradictory to what you know to be true,” she said.
Brown, the founder of The WayFinders Group, a multi-disciplinary change management consultancy, told Newsweek: “Eldest daughters become the family’s crisis manager by default, then carry that hypervigilance into every relationship and workplace for the rest of our lives (unless / until we were able to heal).
“Both caring for my brother and rescuing my parents from their decisions in childhood made it second nature to default to that in adult life. It’s why I’m a phenomenally robust fixer but it’s also why I can’t rest—because for decades, rest meant abandoning my post and leaving my brother exposed to the dysfunction I was trying to shield him from.”
Sleep Deprivation as Survival
Today, many eldest daughters suffer from chronic exhaustion—and yet still cannot rest. “A lot of eldest daughters today struggle with sleeping and feel very conflicted when they’re doing it,” said Smith. “They don’t get much sleep. They can’t sleep. They’re up all night.”
To cope, many turn to substances or distractions. “A lot of them, I hate to say this, but they’re on social media, scrolling, doom scrolling… a lot of them take alternative drugs in order to sleep,” she said.
But Smith doesn’t place blame on them. Instead, she contextualizes their behavior within a system they didn’t create. “Even if they have addictions or additions, based on the dysfunction of family dynamics… it’s systemic… inherited,” she said.
Brown describes her relationship with rest as “complicated.”
She told Newsweek: “For years, rest felt like dereliction of duty. If I wasn’t solving something, managing something, or improving something, who would? Even now, I have to consciously choose rest. It does not feel natural, and it takes work to recalibrate my nervous system.”
If She Could Rest…
Smith offers a heartfelt vision of what could change if eldest daughters were finally allowed to let go of their inherited burdens.
Smith believes eldest daughters could finally rest if they released their sense of obligation, set firm boundaries, felt free to take time off, and were supported by genuine partners, community, and people who truly saw them.
She told Newsweek: “Rest is vital for modeling future generations because it unlocks creativity, wonder, and play; things she missed in her childhood due to being parentified.
“To break this cycle, women need to start dismantling systems of oppression that view them solely as labor, instead nurturing their personhood within communities of women who see them for who they truly are, not just for what they do.”
Brown, the host of The Longest Day Podcast, has undergone over five years of counseling and high-performance coaching.
She told Newsweek: “I learned to view my inability to rest not as a flaw but as a superpower when channeled correctly. I healed by allowing pain to emerge, seeing it, naming it, and letting it go.
“Now I help others heal through mediation, through my white paper work, through creating the very institutional accountability I wished had existed when I needed it.
“I’ve learned that true rest isn’t just physical—it’s trusting that the world, my world, won’t collapse if I’m not actively holding it together.
“My relationship with rest has become more intentional rather than instinctive. I schedule it, protect it, and remind myself that sustainable change requires sustainable people.”
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