Sorry, younger siblings — it’s once again time to block the phrase “eldest daughter” on TikTok.
With the release of Noah Kahan’s latest album, The Great Divide, another round of Eldest Daughter Discourse™ has entered the zeitgeist. In particular, the song “American Cars” — which he revealed to Rolling Stone is about his older sister, Sasha — has found its audience. The lyrics “But you're here and we're so grateful you are / 'Cause you're gonna fix it, you're gonna patch it up” highlights her role as the family problem-solver, a role more than relatable to many firstborns.
Last October, Taylor Swift’s “Eldest Daughter” drove a wave of TikTok confessionals from women who felt that they, too, were the “first lamb to the slaughter.” Whenever the eldest daughters gather on TikTok, however, I find myself left out of the conversation. I’m the oldest of four. However, it seems that nearly every single one of my brethren is loudly, proudly Type A — leaving those of us who are Type B wondering if we’ve somehow eldest-daughtered the wrong way.
I’ll admit that some parts of the firstborn experience resonate with me. I’ve sent my siblings TikToks about how I raised them. (I’m only 6 years older than them at most, so I did not.) They would probably describe me as bossy. (I am.) As the first to leave home, I’ve held back tears while listening to Kahan’s “A View Between Villages” on the Northeast Regional Amtrak, racked with the guilt of abandoning my family. (I’m only three hours away, but that’s beside the point.)
But the stereotype of being an organized, put-together, Type A girlboss has never really spoken to me. Growing up, my bedroom was more of a minefield than an oasis. I’m a chronic procrastinator. I’m always 20 minutes late. I have defied expectations by being a Type B eldest daughter.
While the burnt-out, people-pleasing, Type A eldest daughters have been a pop culture mainstay, Type B representation is hard to find. Who do we have? Trina Vega, Haley Dunphy, and… not many others. There’s nary a meme to be found describing a messy, disorganized oldest sister. It’s almost as if the expectation of perfection bestowed upon the title is so widespread that a flop eldest daughter isn’t even imaginable. But I’m here to say: We exist.
In some ways, being the Type B eldest daughter is freeing. I don’t feel shackled by people-pleasing tendencies; I accepted long ago that you can’t satisfy everyone, so there’s no point in trying.
Birth-order psychology is far from a science, but when the stereotypes are all anyone talks about, it can feel like destiny. The Type A stereotype was so pervasive that I would never have described myself as Type B growing up, even though most of my habits should have pointed me in that direction. I would sit amid piles of my unfolded laundry, completing a late homework assignment I never bothered to write down, and laugh at how funny it was that a Type A perfectionist like myself could possibly land in a situation like this.
It wasn’t until my sister, the middle child with a passion for monogrammed planners, began the process of applying to law school — tracking her process in a multipage Excel sheet, never breaking from her regimented Law School Admission Test (LSAT) study plan — that I came to the conclusion that if she was Type A, I was decidedly the opposite.
I don’t suffer the same plight as the Type A’s, but we Type B’s do share one trait.
While TikTok loves to spread the absolute propaganda that eldest daughters thrive in airports, my sister is the one pushing to the front of the baggage-claim line while I follow behind, spaced out on Benadryl because I forgot to get actual anxiety medication ahead of our flight. When I plan vacations with my friends, Type A eldest daughters armed with detailed itineraries, they book the tickets. I just Venmo them back.
In some ways, being the Type B eldest daughter is freeing. I don’t feel shackled by people-pleasing tendencies; I accepted long ago that you can’t satisfy everyone, so there’s no point in trying. But when you’re expected to be one way, it feels wrong to be another.
When I listen to Kahan’s discography, the songs that speak to me the most are his first-person accounts — yes, the middle-child son. In Pitchfork’s review of The Great Divide, it dubbed these songs “self-directed diss tracks,” and that feels accurate. I relate much more when Kahan calls himself an “*sshole” or repeatedly declares himself “a mess” than I do to the locked-in eldest daughter of “American Cars.”
I don’t suffer the same plight as the Type A’s, but we Type B’s do share one trait: the anxiety that we’re not living up to our title. When you get down to it, maybe worrying that you’re a flop of an eldest daughter is the most eldest-daughter trait of all.
