Oldest daughter syndrome is a parenting choice

When I was a kid my parents divided the house into rooms for cleaning. Two kids, two parents, twelve rooms: three rooms each. Nobody did their rooms, so I did them all. With no parents home between 8am and 8pm, I had to do something remarkable to get their attention. It didn’t work. The only way to get their attention was to participate in their fights. That’s what I think of when I look at this picture of my childhood home. My parents’ fights were always the same fight: they both had big jobs, but my mom had better executive function (not the word we used back then, believe me) and she was furious that my Harvard-grad dad couldn’t manage his time. The fight took many forms: Dad is not home by 10pm, mom is sad, she needs me to witness her anger. Or dad is home at 8pm but acting out his 1950s fantasy of coming home to no responsibility, so my mom throws dinner at him. I tell dad, “I’m sorry mom did that,” and we pick the food off the floor together. Where was my brother? Invisible.…