Youngest Daughter Syndrome
The feeling of shallow breathing as a feminine child lives on a spectrum
The Eldest Daughters have created a movement, finding each other through the grief of their childhood. A communion that revolves around their conditioned responses; the need to be resilient and anchoring everyone around them to the stability they created and sustained. The silent housekeepers in an abandoned homes. They’ve become the face and marketing team for the effects of parentified children. And despite not being an eldest by any means I have felt akin to the weight of the world making a home on my shoulders as well. And just like in younger sibling fashion, I felt left out of the club because of the common thought that the youngest are far removed from such complexity.
These beliefs are misconstrued functions that sneak into the territory of prejudice. I am not saying that I am a victim for being born last. But sometimes I do feel a target on my back for having such uncalculated luck before my incarnation.
So, here’s what I’ve heard about the youngest sibling as a general guideline to sync with my analysis.
1. We’re spoiled, and we get everything we want
2. We’re praised for everything regardless of adequacy (generally coddled)
3. We’re attention seekers/stealers (egoistical and manipulative)
4. Our lives are easier because of less trauma
I am the youngest by many years, my siblings are an average of nine years older than me. So, in many ways I only had the treatment of a being the “baby” for the formative years of my childhood. By the time the hardest parts of adolescence happened, I was alone. It didn’t hurt but it did sting, thinking that they had each other as comrades while I faced my problems alone. Sure, hypothetically I couldn’t called them but it wasn’t a thought that I had, there was no built-in instinct for me to pick up the phone in need. No advice with bullies, no picking out prom dresses, no help with college essays.
All that to say, that I clearly have no identity to this stereotype formed in the eyes of older siblings. It’s a disclaimer I have to make considering my own siblings perceive me through this lense. And that’s the first tragedy of being the youngest daughter is the hovering eye above our heads used like a prison searchlight. George Orwell didn’t call his antagonist BIG brother for nothing.
Society is currently seeing the true inimical effects of constant surveillance, resulting in high paranoia and loneliness. And for youngest daughters this goes deeper than that, because women, regardless of birth order, are taught to be altruistic and kind. So, we are monitored in a way that activates this sense of guilt. It is a shame that isn’t our own, but it feels no different. It’s a generational curse that you’re forced to store inside your heart until the day the hospital ceiling begins to look like a white light. It’s like the whole world is broken and somehow it has become the fault of the daughter forced to play the scapegoat or voiceless bystander. For some it’s the cost of being born, others it’s the cost of their siblings’ mistakes, while a few must pay for having big hearts, bright eyes, and beautiful dreams that can’t compete with reality.
Ridicule, ridicule.
The youngest daughter is demonized as a snake for seeking warmth despite it being her nature. Often, she is tolerated and underestimated, creating this deep need to prove herself through drastic means. I won’t lie and say that she isn’t the poster child for ‘sensitivity’, but it’s for good reason. She must feel through her emotions to better understand the world that has already closed the door on her face. To dissect the nastiest and slimmest parts of herself to get back into a pair of arms, pretending its love and not just comfort. And yet, she cries alone, but she’s been told she only does it to feel bad for herself, so she tries to hold back to not overwhelm others.
Still, I wonder, why is it so bad for her to be sensitive to the energy around her? Afterall, that’s the reason for the survival of all preyed upon game in the wild.
She must switch out any success made in her name with dread. It’s a lost soul in a ballroom that needs its pair. If the eldest daughter is embedding structure into the home, then the youngest daughter is hacking at the fallen rubble of the emotional wall. It is her job to lead the family into the feeling of liberation after the eldest has gotten them onto the path. Any success that she has isn’t her’s alone, no matter how much it seems to be that way. It’s the duty of those raised with feminine traits to make it look effortless anyways. Everyone around a woman of this kind clings to her to get their heads above water. For their breaths to matter because no one’s concerned with her falling into the deep end. It’s impossible for her to drown when she’s been given such high hopes.
And every time the attire requires a black dress or suit, she’ll be there. Because the chances are she’ll be the last to stand and she was there in their final breathes no matter if the disrespect is still ringing in her ears. Chances are she was there the final days before the body landed on the morgue tray. Her youth was used as a crutch to get through the difficulty of life slipping through grates above subway trains that breathe hell’s fire. Because she doesn’t read obituaries out of obligation, no, she holds kindness too near and dear to her heart for her to show outward resentment. The fuel that makes comfort so costly leaves her running past empty on a highway with no gas station in sight.
But she’s mostly there because she was trained to never let anyone feel alone: not a friend, not a parent, not even a dying snail. Perhaps then you’ll realize how strange it is that she’s never cried as much as you thought she did.
She was an overachieve too, but she took every failing so hard that she ends up falling behind, never quite hitting those mile markers like her siblings did. Instead, she’s caught in the cyclical turmoil of the faith that mocks her. It goes back to being torn apart for every mistake made if allowed them at all, because everyone is watching to see whose footsteps you walk in the shadow of. Because there is no more room for individuality for her, when she speaks, she heralds, having already seen everyone’s mistakes but she also has the curse of Cassandra, so they just call her judgmental.
So, the persistent speech of the youngest being marred as annoying and having too many complaints forgets that those are signs of rebellion. The youngest daughters aren’t in it for the glory of pain, the self-sacrificing humility that takes you to the promised land. Rather, for the same reason eldest daughters embody what they do – these women want to bring back the life into the home. Or at least that’s all they desired at one point. Now many of them have become handlers in their older sibling stead.
That is of course when the eldest refuses to protect them from the nature of chaos they were all born into. In turn a desire manifest within her, one for being taken seriously which creates a firm resentment in her family for forcing her to mature beyond her age. After all, her eyes were never shielded properly and she still choices to nurture the problems away, never forgiving the pain but healing them instead of hammering it back in place. Because she knows a free for all doesn’t mean freedom at all.
I’ve heard stories of all types, but the one thing in common with youngest daughters is the constant dying hope. It’s the reason they are so misunderstood, because the desire for technicolor is banished in realms that only deliver images by order of the greyscales. Still, everyone is convinced it’s a figment of her imagination because they know her, they know she’s the favorite and that she’s loved. But how much room is there to be liked (to be known) when “I love you” is filled with weightless vanity? Seeing that it’s code for something she should be ‘grateful’ for. Besides, she’s only invited in the epilogue of everyone else’s lives.
Every time she gets close to something that seems to redeem all the things that died before her eyes it turns out to be trench coat full of flies. And every time the light is just about to extinguish, there it is, back to being ablaze. And that’s why for some youngest daughters the disappointment isn’t a solitude emotion; it’s always accompanied with betrayal. Bitting her straight through the sternum, just to nibble at her already broken heart.
Not only am I the youngest child but I am the youngest daughter raised by a youngest daughter. I’ll disclaim, this isn’t just between us but also my friends who are the youngest daughters as well. I know the archetype more than anyone else, because I’d recognize her even at a masquerade, even with the blackest veil over her face. Especially when she speaks about the saddest things tangled in joy because she’d rather hold onto a whimsical tale than a memory stuffed at the back of the drawer. These experiences are not just my own, so, I don’t need to go to another dimension to see the many paralleled lives with intertwining wires running to the same box TV.
I’m not asking for the youngest daughter to burn in the spotlight because she’s already lived in it a little too long.
Instead, she needs to be next to the hearth so it can backlight her soul, the beauty inside is worth nursing the fire for.