The crushing weight of being a firstborn

By the time she turned forty, Mahfuza had raised more children than most mothers ever do. None of them were her own. She had seen her brothers becoming a graduate, her sisters getting married, and her father being looked after; amidst all these, the household activities carried on. All of it was her doing.

And still, when the nights grew quiet and the house emptied, she found herself staring at a cradle that never rocked, longing for a child she never had. 

The eldest of half a dozen siblings, Mahfuza stepped into the role of mother when Muriam, their mother, passed away. She raised the younger ones, gave away the better part of her youth to become the scaffolding on which her family could stand. 

She got married as well, hoping life might finally give something back. But motherhood never came. What did arrive was the gnawing loneliness of siblings drifting into their own busy lives, leaving behind the one who had once held them together. Illness followed, then depression.

By her early forties, Mahfuza's body gave up too. She had carried the burden of others for decades; no one carried her until it (the lifeless body) had to be carried to the graveyard. 

I am like a living dead person you don't want your children to turn into. I was the example — everyone was proud of me and mentioned my name when advising others on how to uplift families. And now I am an example that shouldn't be emulated.

Abdur Rahim

If we reflect on Mahfuza's story, all we could perhaps remember is the sacrifice of Nita in 'Meghe Dhaka Tara', the classic film by Ritwik Ghatak. In the film, Nita too is the eldest daughter who keeps her impoverished family alive, only to be discarded when she falls ill. Her final cry — "I want to live!" — still reverberates across South Asian cinema, portraying the silent struggle and woes of the eldest sibling (firstborn) in a family.  

Mahfuza never cried so loud, but the weight of her life suggests she might have undergone the same agony. 

Mahfuza's story was not a twist of fate. It was the making of an eldest daughter—raised to believe her worth lay in sacrifice — expected to be flawless, taught to live for others before herself.

Sociologists have long argued that eldest children are "parental deputies," silently enlisted to hold the family together. The eldest daughter, in particular, carries what one scholar calls the "hidden tax of gender" — expected not only to be responsible, but also flawless. Fathers often project onto them the need to be the perfect example, the moral compass, the one who shows younger siblings "the way." 

It is an expectation so deeply ingrained in families that its cost often remains unseen, the outcome overlooked or invisible — even perhaps a Mahfuza-like ending, or the "living dead" like Abdur Rahim perennially suffers.

For eldest sons, the story unfolds differently, but the burden is not lighter if not rather heavier. Abdur Rahim, born in a poor family with two brothers and a sister, gave up his studies to seek fortune abroad. He borrowed money from relatives, secured a migrant worker's visa, and within three years repaid every loan. He sent remittances that transformed his family's life. He arranged his sister's marriage. He brought one of his brothers overseas.

Rahim was the shining eldest son, the one who lifted everyone else. Until he married. 

His wife, left behind in Bangladesh, clashed with his parents. Rahim, shuttling between countries, was torn between loyalty to his parents and devotion to his wife. To stay with one meant failing the other.

In his own eyes, he was suddenly neither a good son nor a good husband.

"I am like a living dead person you don't want your children to turn into," Rahim said. 

"I was the example — everyone was proud of me and mentioned my name when advising others on how to uplift families. And now I am an example that shouldn't be emulated", he lamented.  

Rahim had sacrificed everything for his family and discovered there was no script for balancing love and duty. His success abroad had given him money, but not the freedom to be whole.

If Mahfuza and Rahim's stories are the burden lived, Mustafizur Rahman's story is the burden anticipated. A new father in Dhaka, he dotes on his baby daughter with an intensity that feels both tender and relentless.

"She is my whole world," he said. "I will bring her the moon if needed. She will grow into the smartest and finest daughter. She must set an example for others."

This unrelenting love, he believes, will make her life easier. No doubt life without parents is the worst that may happen to a child, yet the very words of Mustafizur reveal a contradiction.

Because at what point does love harden into expectation? At what point does perfection demanded in the name of care become a chain rather than a gift?

Psychologists argue that eldest children raised under such conditions often live double lives: outwardly successful, inwardly exhausted. They meet the benchmark of "excellence" set by their parents but struggle to know who they are without it.

In many families the expectations placed on the eldest are not merely a matter of affection; they are structural. The 'deputy parenthood' — some scholars and commentators describe this as a kind of invisible labour.  

There are hardly any Bangladeshi studies on this, though—not on open sources at least; however, there are enough international studies surrounding this.

For example US scholar Allison Alford, who researches family roles, calls it "daughtering" — the quiet, practical caring that can be satisfying but also exhausting.

Research on birth order and family stress supports this lived experience. 

Studies show birth order shapes how children are socialised into responsibility and that firstborns often shoulder more family administration, care work and emotional labour — roles that increase stress and the risk of parentification. 

One review argues these dynamics affect coping and mental health across the life course.

Cultural context matters as well. "In families following a patriarchal order, the eldest daughter often bears most of the burden from a young age," notes sociologist Yang Hu — a pattern that can "steal" childhood and restart cycles of gender inequality. 

Framed this way, Mahfuza's devotion and her collapse stop being an anomaly and become a predictable outcome of social expectation.

And the complexity intensifies when the eldest revolts and it shatters the parents, sometimes permanently damaging the relationship dynamic.  

Shilpi, the eldest daughter of a middle-class family, grew up with her parents' dreams stitched into her skin. She was beautiful, and her family basked in the pride of believing she would land a husband who would lift them higher still.

"In our village," she recalled, "my parents told everyone they would find me a groom in America. When a man with a green card proposed, they were overjoyed. But I refused. I wanted to marry the man I loved, a private employee in Dhaka. To me, that was enough."

Her father broke down. Though he reluctantly agreed, Shilpi felt she was never quite the same daughter in his eyes again. "Until he died," she said quietly, "I don't think he forgave me."

For Shilpi, the burden was not of raising siblings, but of embodying her parents' ambition. To be the eldest meant to be the dream-carrier — even when it suffocated her own.

Muriam's death left her daughter Mahfuza with too much responsibility too early. Rahim's loyalty to both wife and parents left him torn in pieces. Mustafizur's daughter may yet grow under the shadow of his relentless care. Shilpi chose her own path but paid for it in estrangement.

These are not isolated stories. Research shows that across cultures, eldest children — and especially eldest daughters — are burdened disproportionately. 

In South Asia, where family bonds are central, the eldest often becomes both glue and scapegoat: praised when they give, blamed when they withhold.

And this is not uniquely Bangladeshi. 

International studies have found eldest daughters in Japan, Nigeria, and the United States echoing the same refrain: being the "third parent" to siblings, the standard-bearer of success, and the keeper of the family's pride.

The weight may look different across societies, but the feeling is similar.

The eldest child often grows up before everyone else — the dutiful daughter, the migrant son, the one parents turn to, the one siblings lean on. But when their shoulders sag, who do they lean on?

Perhaps that is why Ghatak's 'Meghe Dhaka Tara' remains so haunting. Nita's cry to live is not always hers alone.