When Your Parents’ Emotions Become Your Job: Breaking the Daughter Guilt Cycle

If you’ve ever hung up the phone with your parents and felt instantly drained—like you just did a whole emotional shift—you’re not imagining it. For so many women, being a daughter isn’t just the visits, the calls, or the errands. It’s the invisible emotional labor: smoothing things over, managing tension, carrying worry, and trying to make sure everyone feels “okay.”

And when you’re also raising kids (especially teens), working, and trying to hold yourself together… that daughter role can quietly become another full-time job.

In this episode of the No Guilt Mom Podcast, I’m talking with Dr. Allison Alford—communication scholar, professor at Baylor University, and author of Good Daughtering—about why adult daughters carry so much guilt, how burnout builds over time, and how to set boundaries that protect your life without feeling like rejection.

Resources Mentioned

Pre-order Good Daughtering: The Work You’ve Always Done, the Credit You’ve Never Gotten, and How to Finally Feel Like Enough

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