The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Good Daughtering: The Work You’ve Always Done, the Credit You’ve Never Gotten, and How to Finally Feel Like Enough by Allison M. Alford PhD

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Good Daughtering: The Work You’ve Always Done, the Credit You’ve Never Gotten, and How to Finally Feel Like Enough by Allison M. Alford PhD Daughtering101.com https://www.amazon.com/Good-Daughtering-Always-Credit-Finally/dp/0063436426 A transformative look at the hidden work of all adult daughters who share the invisible load, from the eldest to the youngest, offering a fresh perspective on care, emotional resilience, and the power daughters have to shape healthier, more fulfilling family connections. For readers of both Susan Cain’s Quiet and Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play. Daughters grow up believing their role in the family is simple: love your parents, help out when you can, and carry on the traditions that bind families together. But adulthood reveals a more complicated reality—one where women take on the invisible labor of emotional support, crisis management, and unspoken expectations that leave them feeling stretched thin and unseen. So, what is “daughtering”? It’s the unpaid, invisible work women do to hold a family together—checking in, stepping up, and smoothing over—without ever considering its cost. In Good Daughtering, Dr. Allison M. Alford—a leading researcher in family communication—unpacks the untold story of adult daughters and the quiet, essential work they do. Drawing on years of groundbreaking research and personal interviews, she explores how societal expectations, gender roles, and generational dynamics shape the experiences of daughters in ways that are often misunderstood or overlooked. Whether navigating generational expectations or balancing their own lives with the needs of their parents, Good Daughtering reveals the complexities of a role too often taken for granted. Daughters are the ones who do the planning and saving for their futures and those of their families, and support parents emotionally and practically as they age. This book speaks directly to eldest daughters who become family anchors, and the middle and youngest daughters who take on different, but no less important, obligations and responsibilities of being a good daughter. Using sharp insights, relatable stories, and actionable tools, Dr. Alford invites women to reflect on their relationships, recalibrate their roles, and reclaim joy in their lives. Whether you’re paying the price for Eldest Daughter Syndrome or find yourself doing the work of caring for parents without recognition, it’s time to make your efforts visible and valued. More than a prescriptive guide, Good Daughtering is the long-overdue recognition of daughters who carry the weight in a family. It’s a roadmap for creating relationships that are not just functional but flourishing. This is the book every daughter deserves: an invitation to be seen, valued, and empowered in her role while honoring her own needs and desires. About the author Dr. Allison Alford is a researcher and author whose work brings visibility to the often-overlooked experiences of women—especially the family and social roles that tend to go unnoticed or underappreciated. Her current focus is on daughtering, a term she uses to describe the invisible labor and emotional work adult daughters provide in support and care of their families. Through her writing and speaking engagements, Dr. Alford shines a light on this powerful role, encouraging audiences to rethink what it means to be a woman in today’s world. With a warm, relatable approach, she blends personal stories, academic insight, and cultural critique into compelling talks and essays that invite meaningful reflection. Learn more about her work and explore resources for adult daughters on her socials.

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. In the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in.

Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm O'SVos here from the Chris Voss Show.com. Ladies and gentlemen there, and ladies six, and that makes the official. Welcome to the big show. As always, the Christmas show has been around for, what, 16 years.

Now, of course, it wasn't always 16 years, but it's been a full 16 years and 2,800 episodes. Make sure you're further sure of your family, friends and relatives. Go to Goodrease.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Forchast, Christfoss. YouTube.com, Fortress, Christfoss. all those crazy place on the internet. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily

reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Faw Show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today, we're an amazing young lady on the show with us today. Her book is entitled, Good Daughering, the work you've always done, the credit you've never gotten, and how to finally feel enough. Or I'm sorry, like enough. Out February 17th, 2026 by Allison M. Alford.

and she's a doctorate. She's got a PhD, so she's really freaking smart, and that is the type of people that we have on the Chris Foss show because the host is an idiot. Dr. Allison Alfred is a communication expert, author, and speaker whose work centers on the often-invisible roles, women play in their families and communities, especially the overlooked labor of adult daughters,

with a PhD in communicative studies and two decades of university-level teaching. She brings both academic depth and heartfelt clarity to every conversation about gender, identity, and relationship or relational responsibility. Welcome to the show. How are you, Allison? Wonderful. Thanks so much for having me here to talk about being a good daughter, which I think about half the world's population knows something about. Now, which half are the bad daughters?

Is there a half of the half of? No, the other half is sons. Oh. That must be the bad part. So, Allison, give us your dot-coms. Where can people find you on the interwhips? Yeah, you can find me on dottering 101.com. And, of course, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Substack.

I have a daughtering 101 where I share a lot more information there. So I'd love for people to connect with me, daughtering 101. So give us a 30,000 over you. What's in your new book? The book is about the cultural understanding of doing daughtering. So daughtering is a term. that I've helped popularize, that really gives us an idea that what adult daughters, what women do in families is really important for the glue to keep families connected. But often it's an invisible

form of labor because we're not getting credit for it. People aren't saying, wow, that was such great daughtering. And so not everybody's noticing, even the daughters, that we are doing so much, spending our resources, our time, our effort to try to help these families stay connected. So the book is about learning about that and trying to help make some effective changes. Ah. And I mean, getting people thank you for the work you do. I mean, that can sometimes be quite the challenge. You know, some people are really busy and, you know, I always thought that if I just did things because I love people that they would notice and they would care and that seemed to actually end up the opposite because I would give too much. Is that kind of sometimes the case?

Or how does it work? How do we get more recognition, I guess? Yeah, I mean, so this conversation we're having is how we start to get recognition and talk about it and bring it into the cultural, you know, awareness. When we think about how we talk about families, we know that if I were to talk about parenting, I could say, oh, parenting, it's hard, it's complicated, it's time consuming, but also I can like it and be glad about it. And it's rewarding for my life. And so we need to be able to have that same conversation. about daughtering, you know, especially as our parents' age, we start to notice as women that we're doing more or different stuff. And it just gets really complex and sticky. And we're trying to

respect our parents' autonomy. We're trying to, you know, respect the way our relationship has always been set up. But we're also seeing as a daughter, I'm working really hard. I'm calling. I'm thinking ahead. I'm trying to prevent conflict. I'm, you know, being this logistical CEO. I'm being the emotional barometer or peacemaker. And yet nobody is really going around saying, thank you for doing that. Thank you for being our emotional weather vein today. And, you know, it's not necessarily that we have to thank each other, but I think having an awareness that daughters are contributing a lot to what makes family life successful. Talking about that more, that's where the relief comes in. And when you say in the sense of daughtering, this is something that's the

interactive family communications and interactions that, you know, you go on a family unit, you know, sometimes they're fairly complex with, you know, married, you know, like once everyone, all the siblings get married, you know, sometimes those, those other folks can cause issues and stuff like that. Is that a good thing there? Yeah, you know, when we talk about doing daughtering, it's really these everyday tiny behaviors that are important in families. Many times when people bring up daughtering, I feel like we jump straight to. When my parents like really old or sick and they need me, then of course we know that's really when the daughters show up and it kicks in as being a caregiver.

I'm trying to bring attention to the ways that we do daughtering all across our lifespan and not necessarily because something traumatic is happening, but because it's part of our everyday life. Just like I go to work and earn a paycheck and I do, you know, little small things every day. Every day isn't a big day, you know, with a big project or a big client. but showing up and doing the work and being consistent, it really matters. And other people benefit from that. And ultimately, I benefit too.

And I feel a lot of great purpose in my work. So I want us to talk about daughters like that too. I want us to think about, you know, your sister, your friend, your wife, your aunt, your niece, whichever that may be. And how much sort of time intensity or, you know, resources and effort, she puts into doing stuff for the family, stuff that you can't. Obviously, if the house was going to have a tornado hit it and the parents called and they said, you know, Alison, come help us board up the windows. That's pretty visible. But, and maybe I tell my friends about it or I posted on Facebook.

But when I'm doing the regular everyday work of daughtering, a lot of it is cognitive labor, like CEO type planning and strategizing, thinking ahead, worrying. A lot of it is emotional bandwidth to try to keep everybody at peace or, you know, playing nicely with one another. And I also do work as a daughter through my identity, just how I carry myself in the world. I don't have to be face to face with my parent. to be doing daughtering.

Ah, that's good. No, I learned a new term the other day called, I think I have this right, the sandwich generation or the, and it entails, you may be able to describe it better than I do because I just barely first heard of it the other day from a guest. Do you want to take a crack at it? Yeah, let me take a stab at it. The sandwich generation is a term that's been around for several decades now,

but describes particularly when an adult is in midlife, and they have kids who need them on the one side, but they also have parents who are starting to need them on the other side in new and different ways. So it feels like you're being sandwiched between these needs, and you're trying to give everybody what they need, while you're also working or trying to maintain a marriage or a relationship, a partnership, you know, be a voter, a community member.

and that squeeze can feel really stressful where you're not sure where to put your resources on your children or on your parents who are needing you more. Yeah. I heard that term for the first time and I was like, wow. And, you know, we just have this situation where people are living longer than they've ever lived in their whole lives, historically through time with humans. And yeah, I mean, when I first heard the term, I was like, I was like, I think someone joke that it was you're making sandwiches for two people you're making them for the kids and

you're making for the adults you know and there's a lot of you know parents that are aging into dementia and issues you know there's a lot of that extra care taking so you probably are making sandwiches sometimes but yeah that sandwich between generation and that's a that's a hard road to do I mean it's hard enough to raise a family and children but then you have to deal with parents that are sometimes going into dementia failing health or just you know taking care of and make sure they have plenty of attention. You know, the biggest, the biggest thing I see a lot with old people and what I

think we've talked about it on the show is, you know, loneliness and depression and alienation because, you know, the world gets busy and they're kind of retired, but, you know, there's still people too. And they need an interaction and socialness and,

and you know, the one thing, someone should talk about this, because I don't think everyone's ever talked about this, but your friends really disappear when you get older. You know, I'm at that age now in my 50s where everybody's just going away around me. I saw my friends and they're just having a heart attack and killing over one day. And I'm just like, he was 10 years younger than me. Where am I at?

You know, it's something you need to do. But maybe somebody needs to write a book or talk about that. I'm here, right? Wrote a book. You know, you might be surprised to learn that the term sandwich generation was actually coined about 40 years ago. Oh, really? And, you know, I think terms like that can come and go, right? So maybe that's why you haven't heard of it. But I would venture to guess that a lot of women have heard of it. And part of the conversation that we're having is that there just seem to be different

expectations for women versus men in society. And that's not to say that men are not showing up for their families or doing a lot, but especially in the United States, we champion men for going out in the world and conquering their career and, you know, climbing the ladder of success, as you might think. It's very individual one rung at a time. And often women are valued for being, you know, gatherers who keep people connected, who bring us all back together for holidays and traditions and meaning making and really keep the sort of feeling of family going. And that can be very stressful for women, especially, you know, as we think about generational change, and shifts happening.

Lots of women want to do their career too and have beautiful, you know, ideas and vision for where they can go, but there's still largely an expectation on women to do more with child care, with the house, with their parents. And there are even some women who say, you know, as the eldest daughter, it's even more on them because they've had this lifetime of caring for people in their family. So the book is about bringing awareness to these challenges and giving us the language for talking about it. Because for so long, we haven't had the language or had these types of great conversations we're having today to describe daughtering what it is, why it's important, and why we think of women as daughters and their role as daughters. And we don't want to call everything a woman does mothering, right?

because it's not, you know, everything we do is not mothering. In fact, there are lots of women more and more who are not mothers, who are not partnered, who are not married. And so giving some language to that daughter experience really gives us a picture of the whole humanity and complexity of women. That was the question I was going to send to you next was, you know, why daughters instead of mothering? So that explains that.

Yeah. I could go into that more if you want me to talk about it. Sure, please do. Please do. Yeah, I think for a long time, we have, and this is kind of cultural as well, is that we tend to use the word mothering and mothers and motherhood. And there's a lot of emphasis on it and how important it is. And I am a mom, so I'm not discounting that. It's very important. But I try to remember that as a mom, as a mother, as someone who tries to do well at motherhood, I want to save that for just my children. I don't mother my husband.

and I don't want to mother my parents. I am their daughter. I'll never be their parent. I can never be 25 years older than them. I'll never have gone through the scenarios or situations or political contexts or newsworthy things that they did that matter generation to generation. So I really want to bring honor to using the word daughtering and thinking of the care work that daughters do, but also kind of letting daughters be. All kinds of daughters.

You know, sometimes I call myself the porcupine daughter because I'm the only one who will bring up difficult topics. I'm the only one who will be pushy and be like, no, we all need to do this, guys. Get together. You know, you could be a variety of kinds of daughter. And it doesn't all have to look sweet and friendly and nice and caring. All of those aspects of daughtering are important to our society. So we have all kinds of people represented. Yeah.

Yeah. How did this come about? When did you go on this journey? I don't know if this is part of your PhD study, but I think you've been teaching and speaking and training on it for quite some time. How did this whole concept develop? Yes. So when I was earning my PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, this was around 10, 12 years ago,

I started researching and writing about this topic. So I was in school and I read this great article about kinwork. or kin-keeping, kin-k-I-M. And I realized that this was a topic that I'd never heard of until all of a sudden I was reading kind of an obscure, you know, academic journal article. Or maybe it was like something that had been around, like when you heard Sainoich Generation just the other day, and I hadn't heard this idea of kinwork or kin-keeping. And basically that topic, what it means is the stuff that people do in families to try to tend

to the family. So if you are, you know, going to host a holiday party, let's say you celebrate Christmas and you want to invite your great Aunt Rita. She's a widow. And so you need to remember to invite her. And then somebody needs to get her a gift, you know, so that she has something to open when everybody's opening something. And so that remembering, that thinking ahead, that planning, that purchasing and wrapping, all of those things. take up mental space, mental load. But they matter for the family. Everybody wants the aunt there. Everybody enjoys the experience, or we can enjoy the experience of family in healthy families. But we don't want to overlook the work, the resources it takes to get us to that spot of having

nice family interactions and support. So that's when I started thinking about, you know, how I show up in my family. And I come from a family, of boss women, boss babes. And I was looking around thinking, the daughters that I know are really the ones who are doing so much of this, you know, expert level type of work. Sometimes I call it being the cruise director. The cruise director has to be like, you know, like on the love boat. Okay, you're scheduled for this on the Lido deck.

Next, at 1,500 hours will be this. somebody has to have the schedule, the ideas, all the events planned, and then invite everyone there, and then everyone has a lovely time because of this work that has come before. And that's when I started writing about daughtering. And it was quite a challenge to get started because there was nothing out there on it, not in the way that I talk about it. And so I started doing research. And in the past 10 years, I've talked to hundreds of women.

And we did this big research study last year. I'm a professor at Baylor University in the business school. And we got some funding and did this qualitative research study. And we interviewed one-on-one over 300 women to ask them, you know, how do you do daughtering? What's it like? We asked them about whether they like being a daughter. What's hard about it? We asked them about birth order.

We asked them about geography, like how close do you live to your parent and does that matter. And we just started to find out there's a lot of nuance there that once you dig into it, you realize, wow, that changes, each of those things changes the context of a family experience. And each of those beautiful experiences is worth knowing about and trying to understand more. Because if we can understand what makes people enjoy family life, then we can keep helping and training people to love their families, to stay connected, to appreciate the support. And we can combat some of those loneliness problems, that epidemic of loneliness and, you know, that ends up impacting our bodies as well.

Oh. So tell us about some of the offerings you have on your website, some of the things that people can engage with you or work with you on. Yeah. I have the website, Daughtering 101. And right now I'm embarking on a speaker series. So I would love to come to your conference, your event, and bring a little bit more nuance, share with you even more of what's in the book, because this was just the tip of the iceberg. And try to help individuals understand how daughtering impacts our lives, even in ways that maybe you've never thought about it.

And it's not just for women, it's for men too. And having that cultural conversation, how does it matter in the workplace? How does it matter with my aging parents who are retiring or becoming ill? How does it matter if we're 25 and trying to be a good daughter? So you can contact me for my speaker series on my website, Daughtering 101.com, or contact me for individual coaching. I've been a coach for over 10 years,

and I love working with individuals who can share, you know, the nuances of your story with me. And I'm really excited of the events that I have coming up over the next several months, part of my book tour. Here's again my book. You can see it behind me. It's a beautiful pink book called Good Daughtering.

Available anywhere fine books are sold online, but of course also on my website, Dottering 101.com. My favorite thing is hearing the stories of people and their families and what makes you love your family and what gives you life's purpose and makes you happy. And I think we need more positive conversation on those types of things in this world we live in. So that's what I'm here to provide. And so they can reach out to you on your website. Do they, is there any sort of certain people you work for or work with maybe minimum income or or level of career or anything like that or I suppose that really wouldn't apply too much to some of this?

Yeah. You know, one of the things that I thought as I wrote this book was I'm writing to smart people. I mean, you know, I think that daughtering is an elegantly simple concept once you've heard of it. And if you want to engage with ideas about families, roles, gender, society. expectations and how we can optimize those things so we can become more efficient in our lives happier, then it's not just for individuals. It's for workplaces. How can workplaces understand how this type of information will improve their workers' ability and sustainability? There's not a specific income level or individual who's right for this. I will say if you're in a traumatic,

toxic, narcissist, drugs or abusive relationship. This may not be enough for you. There's some other resources for those really difficult relationships. But for those of us, which is the majority, who are not in that really hard place, we're in a kind of a typical normal place, I call the messy middle. And we just would like things to be a little bit better. I'm here to help with that. So definitely start by getting the book. Each chapter has, activities at the end of every chapter that give you an awareness of what is daughtering, how much am I doing, do I want to be doing this? And then how do you change it? There's tips for doing conversations with your family, for having those difficult conversations, setting boundaries,

starting new traditions that work for you. And so it's a really active topic, meaning there's a lot of work for us to do together. And so I'd love for you to reach out to daughtering women. Thank you very much, Allison, for coming the show. We really appreciate it. It's been very insightful. I've learned some new terms today. I learned more about the sandwiching thing, too, that sandwich. Yeah.

My first impression was they're making sandwiches for everybody, I guess, both sides, you know? It's kind of like changing diapers. You've got to change diapers on both sides now. So you've got that. Bless you. Thank you. As we go out, give people your final pitch to pick up the book, where fine books are sold and your dot com.

One last time. Yeah. I'm Dr. Allison Alford of Daughtering 101.com. And if you pick up this book, which is called Good Daugering, you will find some of the things that you have known about but not known how to discuss. You will find relief from some of life's everyday consistent issues that you've been facing. And you will find a daughterhood of women who are sharing that with you. So please go pick up the book. Thank you very much, Allison, for coming the show.

We really appreciate it. Appreciate it very much, Chris. to be here. Thank you. Thanks for us for tuning in. Order up for book, folks, where refined books are sold. Good Dottering. The work you've always done, the credit you've never gotten, and how to finally feel like enough. Out February 17, 2026. I can't believe we're still in 2026 and I'm in March now. I'm like, what to? I thought that was next year. Anyway, thanks for tuning in everyone. Go to Goodrease.com, Forteous, Christchrist,

Christfoss, LinkedIn.com, YouTube. Facebook.com, all for Chris Foss, one word. We'll see you guys on the other. Be good at each other. Stay safe. See you next time. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve

your brain and your life. Warning. Consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed. all right elson that you have a second