Fresh Take: Dr. Allison Alford, GOOD DAUGHTERING

0:28We always recommend Shopify. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Fresh Take from What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. This is Margaret. And this is Amy. Today we're talking to Dr. Alison Alford. She is a communications scholar, researcher, and author of the new book, Good Daughtering, the work you've always done, the credit you've never gotten, and how to finally feel like enough. Through more than a decade of research, Dr. Alford has become the leading expert on the unspoken role of the adult daughter, the invisible emotional glue of families, and the toll that being good takes on women's sense of identity and worth.

1:09I cannot wait for this one. Welcome, Allison. Thank you. Glad to be here. We've been doing the podcast for 10 years now, and I would have said I'm done having the how did I never think of this this way moment because we've talked about so many things. But this book gave me that moment in terms of, oh, this is a whole other thing that is affecting my life in ways that I had not particularly quantified. So let's talk about defining the term daughtering. Yeah, you're not alone in having that reaction to this idea of thinking of daughtering as something important and active. So when I think of daughtering, I think of the way that adult daughters function in a family to try to keep everybody together, hold everything together.

2:01It's not only active, but it's often invisible. It's the emotional, logistical, and mental work. And many times women are completely burnt out by it without even recognizing they're doing it. Yeah, invisible not just to other people, but almost to myself. Yeah, absolutely. It's one of those things when I did the research and I spoke to women and I asked them about doing daughtering, they would start by saying something like, well, I don't do all that stuff, thinking that it was some really super special daughter does these, you know, things where you're super close. Does the most, right? The most.

2:38They would say, well, I don't do all those things. And then we start going through, well, what do you do? And how do you show up in the relationship? And oh, that thing you just mentioned, who does that? Oh, that's me. and by the end of our interview, they were like, oh my gosh, I'm actually doing a lot. It just wasn't things that I was clocking. It wasn't things I was counting. So if I wasn't counting it, for sure my family, my partner, my friends, my kids, they weren't counting it either. So let's break it down a little more because we have talked about kingkeeping. We talk about the invisible workload all the time, but let's talk about the specific things that daughtering includes.

3:16There's doing, feeling, thinking, and being. You break it down. So explain to us some of the different things that might fall into each category. So I like to talk about daughtering as a form of work in the same way that as parents, when we show up to be a parent, we recognize like we put our resources and our effort into it and we're working when we're parenting. So daughters, I found through my research, do the work in these different types of ways. So that first one is the doing or the tasks. And this is the one that is the most visible that we notice. It's phone calls, it's showing up for a holiday, planning a holiday, or like the time I planned a big photo shoot for the whole family, you know, intergenerational.

3:58So the doing is the tasks that are often related to when we're face-to-face with our parent. The thinking work is what you're doing, even if you're not around your parent. So it's like thinking of what they might need far in the future. It's worrying. It is being the CEO and managing or coordinating all the logistics for families. I spoke to one daughter who said she was saving money in a bank account that her parents didn't even know about, and it was for 25 years in the future when they would need it. that's taking up mental space. It's taking up some of her finances, but she's not doing it with her parent in that moment.

4:39She's doing it as a daughter. So that's the doing and the thinking. The next one is the feeling. So feeling work is emotion work or emotion labor. One of the best ways I think I do that in my family is knowing when to zip it, when to keep my mouth closed, to not have an argument, or sometimes daughters go around and prevent or smooth arguments among family members as a service to the mom or dad. Like, I'm going to corral my younger sibling because that's going to make mom feel better. Emotion work is the way that we carry the load and feel so strongly, and it has to do with the guilt as well. And then the last one is being work or what I call identity work.

5:23And it's the way we think about being a daughter for our entire life. What's our legacy of our family? How do we carry that? And in what ways do I show up as my mother's daughter or my father's daughter in life when I bring a certain dish to the potluck or even after they're gone and they've passed? How is it I represent being their daughter all the way to the end of my life. So, daughtering and daughterhood is my whole life long, and it doesn't have to be face-to-face with my parent. And the point is, you say this work is so habituated, so normalized, that it's invisible to the women who are doing it often.

6:05It's just what we do, certainly to the people around us. And I'm thinking about how often this work is done for in-laws by the daughter-in-law, right? that it is assumed by everyone that the woman in the family is going to do enough work of connecting with the other woman in the family in order to keep that family relationship going as well. Yeah. Typically, women are expected to do this type of work. And I think that as a society, culturally, we often think, well, it's because you're good at it. It's because women are good at connecting. It's because it's natural for women to have that yearn to connect with other women.

6:42You know, we could go far into the nature-nurture debate, but it's critical for us to recognize that women are trained to do this our entire lives. We're picking up how to do daughtering from our childhood when we're watching, and we are seeing what the stresses our mom goes through, our aunts, our friends' moms, as they do daughtering. And so when we get to adulthood, we think, well, I have to show up in that way or I'm not a good daughter. Everyone will judge me. My parent will be unhappy and it'll be all my fault because I just wasn't trying hard enough. And I think that a lot of what women are expected to do kind of gets conflated or confused with the maternal, that we're all supposed to be interested in providing care for everyone around us all the time.

7:33We have talked to a couple of different women. I'm thinking right now of Jyothi Chand, who wrote a book called Fitting Indian about being first generation daughters in the U.S. and that this theme comes up a lot. A good Indian daughter was something that all of the women in her family started sentences with. A good Indian daughter marries this way. A good Indian daughter does this. And it's interesting, thinking of this book, how much I did not connect that to myself when she was talking about it. And do you have any experience of the immigrant experience and the kind of way this is held to the light almost for people?

8:12Yeah, the cultural experiences around the world are very different. The expectations are different. I think what that reveals is that so much of what feels like we're being a good daughter or how to be a good daughter does come from cultural influence. from what our society says. So in the United States, we have a very economic mindset. And that does create a situation where often we feel like relationships are transactional, and that we don't get credit unless we participate in a transaction. Like I have to debit from myself, give to you to fill your bank account, and I have to do that until you're rich.

8:51And other cultures think differently about the ways that families show up, but whatever the way is that you are taught or trained to be a woman, to be a daughter, to be feminine, to be maternal, to be gracious and loving, that starts to become interwoven with your personal identity of am I a good person if I don't show up in this role in this expected way. And I think that's kind of where we can do the work is we can ask ourselves, what are the expectations? Where did they come from? What part of that do I agree with? And is that even still true in this generation or in this country or in this context or with these new technologies?

9:38And we deserve to reset that bar every once in a while. I think in some ways, the fact that it's so verbal in Jyothi's experience, it allows for more questioning where when it feels like it's just a default that you're not hearing out loud, you kind of march along without ever realizing the water that you're in. Yeah, that's actually such a brilliant point that because the lady you were speaking about, you know, she's got it front and center that the daughter role is a critical role. And there are demands and difficulties to do with that. But part of what I've experienced, what I found in the research, and again, most of my research has been with American women, is the invisibility of it is what's causing us this crisis.

10:26Because if we can't notice it and talk about it, then we can't reframe it or reset it or share the difficulty of it, but also share the beauty of it with others around us. Can we talk a little bit about your research and how you actually do it? Because you're a qualitative researcher and this work is devalued and so women do it. And then therefore, it's also devalued because women do it, including by the women. So tell us about qualitative research and how it leads you to read between the lines sometimes. When we think of scientific inquiry, a lot of times we think of a lab coat and we think of testing a hypothesis.

11:05Those are important things we learn, the scientific method. But to have a hypothesis about any given scenario, you have to generally know how you expect something to behave. And then you can say, okay, my hypothesis is if I change it this way, change a variable, then it will change in that way and I test it and I see if my hypothesis was right or not. Well, another form of scientific inquiry is asking, okay, I know almost nothing about this situation. So I want to go into this situation and just ask what is going on rather than saying I'm going to test some sort of idea that I already have. So qualitative research goes in without those what we call a priori assumptions that I know what's going to happen.

11:52And instead, I just observe. So I could just sit around, you know, at a park or at a cafe or a wine night and watch women with their mothers. You could do like a diary study where you have people write down everything they do for a week and you see like, oh, okay, this is interesting. Or what I did was interviews. And I found at the beginning over 10 years ago when I started doing interviews, you can ask someone a question and part of your results are what they say in response. thoughts. But what I started to notice is what they don't say, what they didn't have language for, what they didn't notice that seemed kind of obvious to me, but they were dancing around.

12:35And if that happens one time, you think, okay, well, maybe I'm inserting some idea here. But as a scientist, you just keep going. You just keep asking more and more and more people until those patterns emerge. And I think what's so important and interesting about things we've learned from the 70s and 80s, these feminist scholars, sociologists, psychologists about things like kin keeping and kin work is that the invisible or the unnamed can still be very real, but it can still be a thing. And that once we give it a name or we give someone language around it, we can see a shift in their thinking and in the mindset.

13:16And then that creates a ripple effect. So that's really what I've noticed in my research and what my hope is for this book as well. We're talking to Dr. Allison Alford. Her new book is called Good Daughtering. When we come back, we're going to talk about the most common complaint that you've heard in your research. Hey there, I'm Kendra Adachi and my show, The Lazy Genius Podcast, helps you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. And you get to decide what matters. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to give you a new way to see. Episodes of the Lazy Genius Podcast are full of compassionate time management tips and permission slips to do what makes sense for you.

13:57New episodes drop every Monday. Follow and listen to the Lazy Genius Podcast on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Allison, tell us the number one complaint that you heard in 10 years of research. Oh, the number one complaint that I hear from women when we start talking about doddering is my mom doesn't know me. She doesn't really know me. She doesn't see me. And in some ways, women talk about playing a role or playing a part. And I asked one woman about this, like, why don't you just tell her that you're hurt by this or that you want more or that you're sad about your sibling?

14:38And she said to me, I don't want her to have that pain. So I just keep the pain instead. And so part of what I learned is that there's a big disconnect in communication around daughtering and between daughters and their parents. And there's something that seems to happen in adulthood where as the younger member of the family, the daughter, becomes an adult, she sort of feels like she becomes this martyr and has to take on all of these things and that she owes it to her parent. That's that economic mindset to do this, to carry these burdens. And then what happens is those burdens become so heavy that it's difficult to see the joy and the beauty and the value that comes out of being in a family.

15:27And many women get burnt out and then pull away, which breaks the whole family system. And it's not really good for anybody. It's that invisibility, I think, of it. And things that you take on. I mean, Amy's book, Happy to Help, has a lot of this element of. It's a personal version of this very thesis. I am sort of secretly taking on a huge amount of work that is unseen. And then people almost resent me for taking on that work because, oh, you're actually doing a lot of things that people don't even care about. about and you're such a martyr and wah wah. I mean, this isn't Amy, but taking this to its farthest conclusion, but it's kind of a catch 22.

16:12Like if you don't do it, people miss it. But if you do do it, people are like, oh, there goes Margaret again, doing her stupid thing. That's, you know, wah wah wah. Yeah. I mean, it's like going into your household and making a big giant meal and you clean the whole kitchen and you take out the trash and you plate up the food and you take it right to the people. And on the one hand, you wanted to do that. You like cooking. You like having a beautiful home. And then on the other hand, you feel like, oh, when I handed them the food, they just weren't grateful enough. Or they said to me, mom, come sit down and watch the show.

16:46You don't need to be in there cleaning. And I'm like, and it seems to be kind of metaphorically like what you're saying. We want to show up. I do think that's true too. Daughters want to be in families. We want to be helpful. We see we're so smart and with it, we're at the peak of our lives. And we're like, I see how to fix this. I see that if I just pick up this, this, this, and this, this life would be so much better for all these people. But after we pick it up, then comes this sort of like, I want them to be very grateful. I want them to notice. And also, sometimes our parents are kind of like, I never wanted you to pick that up.

17:28I never wanted you to pick up my difficulties. I want you to fly or to soar. And then we're thinking, well, I can't soar because then I'm sore away from you. I got too much on my back. Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of one of the things I see in that cycle is what we're really missing is clarity in talking about the experience of doing doddering and how it feels and what we like about it and what we don't like about it. We're just sort of doing it and then assuming what other people are thinking or expecting, but we're not really asking them and they're not clarifying for us what they would like us to do or not do.

18:02Right. But I feel like it's not just like, oh, you're such a martyr and like, and you're just assuming that they don't care. They don't care. They don't like mom makes dinner. Mom is a machine that makes dinner for me and folds my laundry. That is often what happens. And when your labor gets ignored, then on top of it, you feel bad about yourself, that you're putting out all this effort and nobody even seems to see it. Therefore, what must be required is more effort, right? That I must not be doing it well enough or enough. And it isn't that you're imagining that they're ignoring you. They are ignoring you because it's invisible and they don't get it, right?

18:33Nobody's a bad person in this, but it definitely isn't. You're putting in your head this story that they don't notice. No, they don't notice. Right. And then I'm going to quote you. The biggest danger of ignoring this unpaid labor is that as women, we can lose sight of ourselves and agree with the world that we're not trying hard. We're not worthy. We're not a good enough daughter. So on top of all this, you're getting this message that for everything you do, it's never enough. Yeah. A little bit of gaslighting ourselves. Yeah. And I think the antidote to that is what I call narrating, daughtering.

19:03And I think this is helpful too in households for moms or for spouses. Once labor starts to become invisible and when it's invisible, it's honestly ignored. It is taken for granted and by us as well. The antidote to that is to narrate it. This is what I'm doing. This is what I'm thinking about. This is where I'm spending my money, my time, my resources. On the flip side, would somebody else say, well, that sounds like complaining, you know? And maybe, I mean, grumpy people are going to say what they're going to say. But I love the quote from Carl Weick where he says, how do I know what I think till I see what I say?

19:39What that means is once I say stuff out loud, I can kind of re-examine what I said and then think about what I think about that. So a lot of times when we keep it in our brain and we don't say it or write it or share it or make a TikTok about it or do a sub stack, we can gaslight ourselves. We get lost in our own invisibility. We forget whether we think that thing is cool or not. We forget whether we spent five minutes on it or 50 minutes on it. Part of the way we can get out of that cycle is by talking out loud. And I mean, it can be talking or it can be writing, verbalizing what we're thinking, what we're doing.

20:24And that's why I say narrating. Narrating is, this is what I did as a daughter today. I was thinking about this. I put money in that account. I made a plan for this. I looked at hotels for that. And when we start to say stuff out loud, we start to give credit to it. And even if that just begins with me giving credit to me, that's a great place to start. We recently had a snow day in New York and I had a bunch of kids over for sledding and my husband couldn't get to his office. So he was working at home. So I shoveled off the deck so that I could put up a tent with a heater in it so that the kids could sled and then have snacks in the tent rather than bringing all the snow inside.

21:08And then I sat down with the kids and instructed them how this was going to work. And then I made cinnamon rolls and hot cocoa with milk. And I set it up in the tent with the heater. And then I guided them like, where do you take your snow pants off? And I said to my husband, I'm really glad you were home to see this. Like, this is what it's like to run a snow day. Now, do we need an outdoor heated tent for snacks? We don't. But when 12 kids are sitting in there and having cocoa and talking to each other and they're like, we can't wait to do this next time, like I'm creating a home where my children's friends want to be.

21:44And I said at the end of the day, physically, I'm exhausted from doing it physically. Mentally, I'm exhausted from like, no, no, no, don't come in that door. That's not the door. We want the mud coming in. You got to come around. I think you're right that saying it out loud and saying like, listen, is this extra? It is extra. We don't need maybe the cinnamon rolls and the hot cocoa could have just been made with water or whatever. I want it to be done nicely, but also see how much work goes into what for everyone else was like a day of sledding. That there's one ringmaster magician making that day happen.

22:19And I'm going to sit you all down and make you acknowledge it. Actually, it's so smart to bring that up because there's some recent research that says part of being a family is performing family. And in a way, I feel like that's like saying, okay, if I want my kids to do family with me when they're older, I need to talk out and perform and show what is family? What does family mean to us? What does family do? What are the things that make us a family? And that's really helpful, especially in a lot of different family forms, you know, where people aren't always looked at by society as part of the family.

23:00You know, whether it's a neighbor who comes over or step this and in-law that. But I think in many ways what you were saying, Margaret, is like being a mom isn't just the doing of momming. you performed momming and you appreciated your partner's congratulations or notice as a daughter, I'll go back to like doing the photo shoot. My sister and I plan this big family vacation. We went to Hershey, Pennsylvania. So fun. Yeah, it was great. They had a wedding anniversary, a special anniversary that year. So we wanted to do a photo shoot. We all put on strawberries because they had strawberry bridesmaids dresses at their wedding.

23:41And I bought and paid for quite a bit of this. And I had to think in advance to book a photographer and find a venue. And then we had to change for the weather. And then afterwards, I had to pay for the photos, get them printed, wrap them up for Christmas. And part of that is about when people come to my mom and dad's house, they'll see these family photos on the wall. Or we were able to put them on a Christmas card or put them on Instagram. We didn't have to stand together in a field to feel like a family, but the photo taking and sharing becomes performing family. And that's for others to look at us and see.

24:19And I mean, it's an interesting nuance to the idea of how do we make our labor visible and how do we feel like a family? We have to show it off a little bit. And my example wasn't doddering, but it makes me think how I do that with my family, but I don't do that as much with my doddering roles. Exactly. And it seems to me that the trick is to turn the snow day snacks in a tent or the family photo. That is extremely those are very visible, wonderful gifts you're giving somebody that would be hard for them to ignore and walk this a little bit back towards, you know, Taco Tuesday and that you call your mom three times a week or whatever.

24:56That stuff. It matters. It matters just as much. And you shouldn't have to have a ticker tape parade level of performing daughtering or motherhood to feel like your work is worthwhile. Right. It doesn't have to be, you know, a heated tent and cinnamon rolls to be a good mom or be to be a good daughter. Right. But I think that there's something to it. And so I'll share it one way that I narrate my daughtering and how you can do it in small ways. I will call my mom and I'll say to her, Well, I had 10 minutes, so I just really wanted to use those to call you. And I try to just say, like, I'm doing this for you or for us, or this is my gift to you.

25:38I'm kind of saying why I'm using my time that way or how I thought about using my time. So it's not just like, hey, what are you doing? Oh, what are you doing? I'm eating this. I say something that kind of like points at the interaction that we're having. Does that make sense? It does. It totally makes sense. As Margaret said, we had a snow day recently and my dad has died. My mom lives alone. And one of my sisters sent pictures to the rest of us because she lives nearby. We didn't even talk about that, like the levels of daughtering for people who live nearby and people who don't. She showed us pictures of the walk that she shoveled.

26:12And having just prepared this episode, I thought, oh, this is this. She's doing the work. She's showing she's showing me who lives a couple hours away. Look what I did. I did this work. Appreciate me. And I do. And I did. But I never would have thought about it if she hadn't sent me those photos. Yeah. And so beautiful, I think, to partner with our siblings. And it's very easy to turn something like that, Amy, into feeling guilty. Like, my sister wants me to feel guilty about that. Oh, you're so great. Right. Oh, OK. I see. I get it. I guess I'll send you 10 bucks for pizza so we're equal, you know, or we're even or something like that.

26:49It's so nice when there are siblings who can partner because we can't all live close to our parent. You know, I have the same situation, Amy. My sister lives down the street from my parents and I live farther away. And over the last couple of years, she and I have done a lot to make visible all the ways that we want to show up and care for our parent. And we try to give each other credit. One of the things my sister said to me after we were around for a holiday, she said, you just try so hard. You just keep engaging in that type of talking or the funny joke that's not really funny, but you laugh because you're trying to be nice.