Ever feel like the family runs on your unseen effort?
We dive into the real work of “daughtering” with Dr. Allison Alford, a family communication expert whose upcoming book, Good Daughtering: The Work You’ve Always Done, The Credit You’ve Never Gotten, And How To Finally Feel Like Enough, names what so many women live every day. Together, we explore why daughters become the quiet architects of connection, how that role stretches from our twenties through our fifties, and what it takes to make the load visible, shared, and sustainable.
Allison breaks down the invisible labor—mental load, emotional triage, calendar wrangling, and financial planning—that keeps parents and siblings coordinated.
Sylvia shares raw stories from early adulthood, cultural expectations, and therapy work that helped separate love from over-responsibility.
Along the way, we offer practical tools to inventory your tasks, calibrate how much you give, and ask clearly for recognition and help from parents and siblings. We also explore how faith and purpose can ground you when external validation is scarce.
If you’ve ever handled the group text, booked the flights, soothed the tension, and paid the deposit—and still felt invisible—this conversation gives you clarity and a path to feeling like enough.
If this resonated, subscribe, share with a sister or friend, and leave a review to help more daughters find these tools. Tell us: what’s one invisible task you’re ready to make seen?
To connect with Dr. Alford, follow her on Instagram @daughtering101 or preorder her book here: Pre-order my book, Good Daughtering, out February 2026!
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
I’ve still got a lot of fun left.
Hey library, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Release. And she is hailing from Waco, Texas. So here are two Texan girls, and what we also have in common is that we are daughters, and her book is talking about being that daughter that has to take care of the parents and the mothers as they age. And why is it always the daughters? Why can’t it be the sons, right? And this is across all cultures, I find. If you’re the daughter, you are required, and it is an expectation of you to take care of your aging parents. And the brothers kind of give you that expectation. I would hear my brothers say, but it’s your responsibility. You’re the oldest. And so when I read her biography, uh a good friend of us connected us and said, I think she’d be a great fit for you. And I read it and I was like, I want her on my podcast because I want to ask her some questions myself on this. So without further ado, Allison, thank you so much for joining us on Released Out Reveal Purpose.
Oh, thank you, Sylvia. I’m so glad to be here and also just loving our connections and the ways that we overlap and the things that we have in common. But, you know, when you’re talking with a woman, the thing you always have in common is we’re both daughters, right? We’re always going to be daughters. We’ve always been daughters. So I love getting any opportunity to talk about daughtering.
I love the term daughtering. It’s like, wow, that’s a new term. I’ve never heard of that. So do tell us, Allison, how you landed in this space? Like, why now? Why at this moment in time?
Yeah, you know, what’s funny is that for me, it’s been a long time coming. Um, I went to graduate school over 10 years ago, and in graduate school was really uh focusing on my research in family communication, looking at mothers and families, and of course, daughters are part of that family system. And so I’ve been researching and writing about daughters and daughtering for over 10 years now. But I think that it’s finally come to this point where the world is ready to hear about it and think about it differently, what daughters do, because we’re in a space where we’re acknowledging women’s work in a new way, in a way that we haven’t wanted to or been able to acknowledge before. And when I talk about daughtering, I am saying that daughtering is work that women do in families to keep everyone connected. And so adult daughters are doing daughtering for their families, but particularly for mom and dad. And adult daughters are doing this a long time over their lifespan, right? As soon as you’re an adult and you’re 18, so in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, you’re doing daughtering with your parents who are independent and capable, and you’re an adult and they’re an adult, but you’re still doing things on purpose to connect with them and to help keep the family connected. So what I noticed over 10 years ago when I was in graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin was that daughters were not getting enough attention paid to how much work they were doing. If you think about it, and we talk about uh mothers and mothering, we’re like, yes, mothering is hard work. Being a parent is hard work, being a dad is hard work. We have Mother’s Day, we have Father’s Day. If you think about marriages, we’re like, yes, being married, gosh, that’s hard work. And it should be celebrated when people reach each milestone anniversary that they worked hard to stay together. And we even talk about friendships as work. You’ve got to put in the hours, you’ve got to put in the time if you want to be a good friend. But nobody was talking about daughters in that way as intentionally working and trying to make that loving relationship and family happen. And that’s where my interest lies.
Awesome. What is the name of your book that’s coming out early next year?
Yeah, the book comes out in February 2017. February 2027. Well, no, no, no, go again. February 17, 2026. Yeah, I need to say it right. Uh, the work uh it’s called Good Daughtering, The Work You’ve Always Done, The Credit You’ve Never Gotten, and How to Finally Feel Like Enough.
I think it’s it’s perfect, it’s an imperfect time because my mother’s uh turning 85. My father passed away, unfortunately, last year, but being the oldest, I have since like I was listening to what you were saying. We’ve done this for a very long time. I remember when my father was in his 60s and they they did surgery on him to remove a tumor that had grown because of his exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. He was a surgeon in Vietnam. And I remember they stayed in Arkansas for longer. They’re they’re from South Texas. Um they say they’re longer than they anticipated. So I went back to Brownsville, which is where I was living at the time. I was married. I didn’t have children, but I was already in my early 20s, and the expectation was you are to take care of our home uh while we’re away. And so I took care of all their bills. And during that time, I remember a uh tornado hit and blasted all the windows in South Texas, and I had to not only deal with the mess in my home, but the mess in their home. And it was for months and months and months, and this continued for a while, and it never stopped. And you’re right, we don’t get the credit for what we do. It’s this expectation, this invisible expectation that they have of us, daughters. And it’s just all we really want, I think, at least for me, is just the recognition for the effort put in, not just this expectation thrown on me. That expectation thrown on anyone, people would rebel, they wouldn’t like it, you know. And so why is it okay for us? The oldest, and sometimes it’s not even the oldest, sometimes it’s the youngest, but it’s the more responsible one, the one that’s always taken the lead in taking care of the parents. Because I’ve seen friends of mine, and they’re not the oldest, they’re the youngest. But for one reason or another, the other two just kind of throw everything on them. And it reminds me of the movie Um My Big Fat Greek Wedding, how they looked at Tula. Like she’s the one that she’s not the oldest, she’s the younger, the male, or something. And she’s the one that just was always connecting the family, always kind of filling in. And after a while, she’s like, Why am I the one? Why can’t the oldest do it? You know?
Yeah. You’ve nailed like so many important ideas that are kind of what what I’m what I’m trying to circulate or get everybody to talk about or understand. And you are saying all those right, smart, important things. You know, I I think the first part is that we have to think about daughtering as more than we’ve ever thought of it before. Right? If we think of daughtering is what daughters do intentionally for their families to stay connected, so it’s work, but it’s it’s uh often work we want to do or we’re glad to do, but it’s work that we’d like recognition for. We’d like to be told you’re a good daughter, that we can feel like enough, we can feel like we matter. But the second important part is to think that work starts early, right? You’re a daughter from the moment you’re born, you’re a daughter until you die, even after your parents are gone, you’re their daughter. Um daughtering doesn’t just start the minute our parents are sick or elderly. It’s when we’re in our 20s and taking care of their house, or they’re calling us and saying, Can you go get our mail while we’re out of town? Or a lot of times it’s not just these tasks, it’s emotional stuff. You know, my mom was visiting this weekend and she was talking to me about a family situation with a gravestone for her sister and this other family member and these other three family members. And the instinct that bloomed up in me was I’m gonna go call those people and I’m gonna sort that out for my mom. And and or I’m gonna put money towards it, and I’m gonna sort that out because that would make my mom happy. And so there are things that we do as daughters in our life or in our family, they’re not just directly in coordination with mom or with dad, but for the purpose of connecting the family. And and that last bit that you said was that daughters are just expected to do this. And um, I think that’s a huge part of the social piece, is it’s not just that we’re expected to do it, we’re ex we’re expected to like it or be good at it already and um kind of know how to do it. And and I think that there’s a little bit of um that can create some tension in daughters if we don’t know how to do it, or we think everybody else is doing it, or we feel like I’m doing it and my sister or my brother, they’re not doing it. And we get a lot of conflicted emotions about daughtering.
I I know that one that surfaced just recently for me in therapy because I’m getting individual therapy. There were some aspects that were projecting onto my parenting that I wanted to kind of nip in the bud. And as a life coach, we are encouraged by the John Maxwell team to get either therapy or coaching to make sure that everything’s clear and we’re able to guide others very calmly and without letting our feelings kind of project onto their coaching. So here I am in therapy, and they have me doing the geneogram or something, and looking at the tree and the and the relationships between mother and daughter, and mother and father, and the family tree, and everything. And a lot of these memories started to pop up, and there was this video that I shared with my therapist that I had sent to my mom. It was an Instagram video, and I said, I’ve often felt like this, and it was a video that was talking about the emotional toll that the oldest daughter carries for the family, and how they are just emotionally exhausted at times because they’ve been doing all these things behind the scenes that no one gives them credit for. They are the most overlooked uh member of the family. And I said, and I’ve often felt like this since the tragedy with my sister, because there was a um an a situation that arose with my father when I was seven, where we’re on a uh vacation trip, and I had insisted on going up to the summit to go see snow because my father had promised we would see snow and had woken us up at 5:30 in the morning. We were outside of Mexico City and it was freezing. And my mom walking up the summit got very dizzy, so she went down. So she wasn’t there when all this went down. Um, and my sister was there, she was two. I’m five years older than her, and my brother was there as well next to the family. And when we’re done playing with the snow, we start walking back down and she loses her footing and she hits a rock. And and because of the pressure and the altitude and everything, we know that it can change dramatically in a in a little kid. And my father in his training with Vietnam and just coming from a highly abusive home, turned to me and said, If your sister dies, it will be your fault. And in that moment, therapists have explained to me he transferred his responsibility, parental responsibility, onto me emotionally. Um, she survives it, I don’t, and so a lot of these memories are starting to surface as I’m doing EMDR and clearing some of these things out. But that video is so pronounced, and I sent it to my mom, and I said, Ever since that accident, I have felt like this, and I have felt I’m not seen, and I’m not recognized, and I’m taken for granted, and I don’t like it. And I I want I want you to understand that it cannot continue to happen. You cannot continue treating me differently than my siblings just because you think it’s my responsibility to do all these things. It is not, I’m doing it because I want to, because this is I love you, but don’t take advantage of my love. Don’t ever take advantage of me because I certainly don’t deserve it. And she never responded. It was so strange because she’ll respond to things, but I think it’s making her think, like, have I not expressed because there’s been times that they don’t worry about us because we have everything under control. So from from the outside, we look Christine. On the inside, we’re lonely and we’re sad because no one’s like paying attention to us, because they’re just like, oh, she’s okay. I can go take care of the other two because they need me more, because they’re disasters, you know, and so it’s like, well, she’s okay, she’s got it. And and that’s that’s the that’s the part that is coming up over it. As I started to do the tree, I was like, oh, this is gonna be interesting. But it’s it’s it’s important that we clear that out so that moving forward we can do the this work and not what not need the significance. We can give ourselves that validation, I think. Um when we’re close to the Lord, the Lord can give us that validation because God sees everything and He appreciates everything that we do for His children. And so I that’s in the back of my mind now as I move forward in therapy, but I find myself like understanding that your work is very valuable because there’s a lot of women out there, a lot of daughters that get overlooked and taken for granted for the work that they do.
Yeah, that’s such a powerful story and such a such a valuable way to think about what’s invisible and what’s going on in the hearts and the minds uh and the spirit of daughters. And really that’s what we want to draw attention to is what’s called invisible labor, or sometimes we call it the invisible load. Some people call it the mental load. Um, but essentially that so much of being a daughter and doing daughtering isn’t something you can see, it’s not out loud, it’s something that’s happening in the in-between moments, or it’s happening um on phone calls, it’s happening in your mind as you think or plan or prepare ahead or worry. And recently a team of my my research team, we’ve been working on a project about eldest daughters, and one of the things that we discovered is really that eldest daughters are often like the family CEO. And the parents, especially when the daughter’s in adulthood, the parents give this role or let go of this family CEO role that maybe they had to do when the kids were younger, but now the oldest daughter who’s capable in her 30s, 40s, 50s, and smart and quick and really, you know, with it and organizing everyone. And the thing is about being a CEO in in in commerce is you get paid the big bucks. But the tragedy of CEO of daughtering is you’re not getting any credit. There’s not anyone sending you a card where they say, Thank you for daughtering well today, or here’s your bonus, your annual bonus. And um, and yet it is a lot of work. And when I talk about work, I talk about you know, the drain on our resources. And drain doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it. And I I like doing in the same way I like parenting and I like being married to my wonderful husband. Everybody in the world is able to say, like, oh, but clearly you have to take time away from other people to spend time on your marriage. Or I understand if you can’t make it to this thing because you’re at your child’s soccer game, but we’re not giving that same esteem to doing daughtering, and really we have such a limited mindset about what daughtering is. So, one of the examples that I use to talk about how I do daughtering as as a someone in her 40s is uh is talking about arranging photo shoots. So last year, my my parents, you know, with very wonderful blessings, they hit their 50th wedding anniversary. And so for one to two years prior to that, my sister and I were planning a vacation. You know, we have all these kids, we have all these moving parts, you have to set aside time, you have to prepare with your money. So we’re heading into this 50th wedding anniversary trip that we were going to pay for. Um, we did pay for, and as we’re heading into the trip six months ahead of time, I think everybody’s gonna be together. I want to have a photo shoot, a family photo shoot. So six months in advance, I start looking for and finding photographers. I book a photographer, I put the money on the photographer, then I start coordinating outfits as you do. And when my parents got married, they my mom had little tiny strawberries on her bridesmaids’ dresses. So we decided that everyone would wear some version of strawberries in the big family picture. So then we spend months making sure everybody has clothes. I buy my dad a strawberry shirt. I’m texting with my sister and mom about, you know, strawberry clothing. I get all my kids’ strawberry clothes. And then we get on the vacation, and the photographer is messaging me, oh, there’s just gonna be bad weather on the day we’re gonna do the shoot. Let’s move the shoot. So we move the day, we move the time, have to coordinate everyone. Go up to your rooms, get clean, get dressed, get your hair done, get down here at this time. All of that we do the photo shoot during the shoot. I let the photographer be in charge, which was lovely. Well, then afterwards, get the photos, coordinate um getting them printed, give to my parents these beautiful canvases that they can have on their wall. And that was besides the trip itself, you know, those years in the making and months of thinking and the day of and the and the time afterwards, plus quite a bit of a financial investment. And I did all those things because I love them and I love my parents, I love my sister and her family and my family, and of course it benefits me as well. The goal is not to say that daughters are so bothered by daughtering, it’s more to say, we just want some credit and for somebody to say, thank you so much for doing that, and or you’re a good daughter. Um, and that and to my mom’s credit, once I brought up this idea of good daughtering, she started saying to me, Thank you for daughtering me so well, or you’re a good daughter, or I really appreciate the daughtering that you do. And she has begun noticing the invisible.
Yes.
And it’s that acknowledgement, like you said, sometimes you send things to your mom, and most of the time she responds. Just acknowledging what you’re saying is a huge core part of feeling like your work as a daughter matters.
Or you want to be seen. Like, just see me, mom. Don’t judge my words, don’t tell me I’m wrong, don’t get defensive. I’m not saying anything bad. I’m just saying, please recognize. The work I’m putting in, and I don’t have to do it to this degree. I really don’t. I can Yeah. Like my sister doesn’t do it, and you still see her as a daughter. So why is it the expectation on me? It’s a cultural thing too. It is the Mexican in the Mexican culture, the oldest is the one that usually gets thrown. Like, this is your job. And it’s like, really? Why? Why is it my job? Because I just happen to be born first. How am I in control of that? You know? But um it brought up some stuff as you were speaking of your trip, because when my parents turned 40th wedding anniversary, I reached out to my siblings and I said, I let’s do a surprise one for our parents. Um and the coordination behind the scene was primarily me. My brother bought the liquor. We did it across the border back in those years. It was cheaper to do that, and it wasn’t as violent as it is now. And I remember my sister, and she was living in San Antonio at the time, she started yelling at me at one point, just very aggressively, of like you’re bothering me with this right now. And I thought to myself, you’re not doing anything. But you expect to be treated with the same respect as the one doing all the work. Uh, and I I remember just feeling, like, why am I doing this? They’re not doing this, you know. But at the end of the day, I did it because I love my parents, and my mom never got the reception for her wedding that she always wanted. So I gave her that reception because I wanted to make my mother happy, and it was the happiest I had seen my parents. It was the last picture that she took with all of her siblings while they were still alive, and it was a beautiful picture of all of them. Because I what I did was behind the scenes, there were a couple of uncles that couldn’t afford to take the trip from Mexico because they live like super far away, and it was gonna be really expensive. But I flew them all into the valley, and I made sure they had proper attire because this was like a full-blown affair. It was like a wedding reception, right? Complete with a band and alcohol. I mean, that was the whole thing yet. The entire medical community was there because my father was a doctor, and and we pulled it off. They had no idea. I I had one of their best friends um who was assembly at the time kind of come up with this whole scenario of like, hey, can you accompany me to the hospital uh holiday party? I I don’t have anybody to go with, you have to be in a tux, and you have to be like this, and everybody’s carrying. It was really outlandish. It was so awesome. But my parents walked in and it was the greatest thing. And innerly I felt good, but throughout the process, I could there was some tension there with my siblings because they had this idea like, well, you’ll get it done. And I had a full-time job with Pfizer at the time in the Valley, and so I was like, and I was married and I had children, and I mean, and I was like, really? I mean, we’re all busy, why can’t we all pitch in? But um, afterwards, my mother did come up to me and did thank me, and she always remembers that event in her life. And I I was happy to be able to do that for her because she she was an incredible mother growing up, she still is to this day, and and so from that perspective, I could there was some reward for me, right? But from the sibling perspective and the way they treat some of the siblings, it’s just not right. It’s just not right. But so do tell us, like in your research and in doing this book, what are some tips for for women currently in this space?
Yeah, you know, one of the things that you said right there at the uh a few a moment ago was that you have choices about how much of this you do or don’t do, right? And I I think that that’s a really important um aspect to keep in mind for adult daughters. It often feels like socially we have to do all this, but I want daughters to know that you are in control of your well-being, your time, your energy, your resources, and how much you give of that to any particular area of your life. And you can start to notice what you’re doing. And I think that’s the first step is what is the daughtering I’m doing? Okay, it’s more than just picking up mom and taking them to a doctor’s visit or buying groceries. It’s mental, it’s emotional, it’s time, it’s finances. So noticing everything you’re doing and then asking yourself, do I want to keep doing this amount? Do I want to do more? Do I want to do less? Maybe I want to do less of the phone calls and the visits, but I can do more finances. Or maybe I want to do less of the uh, you know, going for like hanging out or going shopping or taking care of the broken windows from the tornado, but I’m gonna be fine doing more um uh, you know, emotional or discussions or managing my siblings. So that’s calibrating is the first part and realizing that you have a choice and that what whatever you think society thinks of you isn’t the end-all be-all of what you have to do. And uh so then the third part is asking for recognition and asking for help. So asking your mom to or dad to to reflect on you what they appreciate or what they like of the daughtering that you’re doing. So you’ll also know if there’s something you’re doing they don’t care about, you could drop it, or asking your siblings what they need to do more of or less of, either again, emotionally supporting you, thanking you, or stepping in in some way. Um, and I will say that’s kind of a growth area for me, or something that I realized just maybe in the last year that I’ve been working on is trying to recognize what my sister is doing, even if it’s not visible to me. So if I want to be on this journey of having people understand my invisible work, I have to stay on that journey for understanding my siblings’ invisible work. And we need our families. You know, there’s I think there’s way too many um online discussions about families when things are hard or hurtful. And now there are certain circumstances where that may be true with great trauma, great toxicity. But for the most part, most families it’s hard, it’s challenging, it’s difficult. But when we stay connected to our families, we are better for it. And families are the building blocks of society, and so when we say to ourselves, it’s worth it, this is hard work, but it’s worth it. I do benefit from it, I want to stay in my family, and we kind of shift our mindset. We’re gonna be able to find moments of joy, we’re gonna be able to find moments where we say, Good job, me, you know, pat myself on the back and um appreciate how what we’ve done brings everybody in the family together. Um, so it’s for our parent, but everybody benefits, including ourselves.
I find that to be so true, and no better words could have been said to end this interview. Any last words of encouragement to the daughters out there doing a fantastic job of daughtering?
Daughters, you are enough just as you are. If you want to do more, do more. If you want to do less, it’s okay, do less or do different. And give yourself the credit for all the invisible and hidden things that you’re already doing, and that those things really do matter. They matter in your family, they matter to your parents and your siblings, and ultimately they matter in society. So give yourself a pat on the back, go get a little sweet treat, like a coffee or something, to praise yourself, and um, and and remember that you are worth it. You are a beautiful, wonderful human, and you get to decide what your life looks like and how it looks and how you show up in that life.
Oh, thank you for that. I appreciate it. As you started speaking, I felt the Holy Spirit in in my heart space. And so I know that that part of that was meant for me, so I appreciate that. Um, if I wanted to buy a copy of your book, we know that it’s launching in February of next year, and I know that I know as an author that there’s going to be copies available prior to the launch. How do they get a hold of that copy?
Yes, and so again, the book is Good Daughtering, the work you’ve always done, the credit you’ve never gotten, and how to finally feel like enough, and it’s from Day Street Books. One way you can get it is online at All Beautiful Fine Retailers. Um, you can pre-order if you’re hearing this uh podcast before February, or if it’s after February, it’s going to be again online, harpercollins.com under their products, good daughtering. And it’s also available as an audiobook. So I’m reading the audiobook, and I find for busy women on the go, that is a great way to consume books. You can ask your local library to carry a copy, and it has helpful activities and tips at the end of every single chapter and extras at the end of the book. And I think those are great ways to get started doing the work, the thinking work, the mental work, the heart work. So I really do hope that you’ll pick up a copy or you’ll send a copy to your sister or your brother or your partner or your mom or dad so that we can start sharing the word that daughters are doing hard work. And all we want is a little bit of thanks, a little bit of praise, and a little bit of partnership in that work.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Allison, for joining us today. It has been such a pleasure to hear you speak, to hear all the ways that we can, as daughters, step into our light and step into our power more. And for the listeners of release that revealed purpose, um, remember Matthew 5.14 to always be the light because you are a big, bright light in this world, and you have a purpose here on earth. And when you allow God to guide you into that purpose, you find it quicker. Use the shortcut to your joy, to the greatest story you’ll ever know, greatest peace you’ll ever feel. So have a wonderful week. Stay safe. Love you all. Bye now.
So that’s it for today’s episode of Release Doubt Reveal Purpose. Head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on iTunes. We’ll win a chance the grand prize drawing to win a twenty-five thousand dollar private VIP day with Sylvia Worsham herself. Be sure to head on over to sylviaworsham.com and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.