Updated October 12, 2026, 8:45 a.m. ET
Genevieve Lobos, 43, said she was “always the more responsible one” between herself and her younger brother. That’s why she took on most of the caregiving responsibilities when her mother’s cancer returned in 2022, she said.
But was she just better at caring? Or was the burden falling on her because of her status as the eldest daughter? Looking back, Lobos is no longer sure.
“Was it innate? Sure, I guess,” she said. “Was it something that I necessarily chose or was it something that just had to happen because it was kind of a utilitarian thing? I think it was more of the latter.”
She said she has friends who are also older girls and find themselves “in the same boat.”
This is called the “girl tax”. Family caregiving responsibilities tend to fall disproportionately on daughters, with daughters nearly twice as likely as sons to provide hands-on care, according to an analysis from Waterlily, an AI-powered financial planning platform. A Bay Alarm Medical survey of more than 1,000 adult family caregivers found that nearly half of caregivers feel resentment toward a sibling because of an unfair caregiving burden, and that daughters overwhelmingly shoulder the bulk of the manual and emotional care work.
“We have a superpower as women, as caregivers and nurturers,” said Alexandra Mysoor, co-founder and CEO of Alix, an estate settlement service. She added that many women can anticipate the needs of their loved ones. When it comes to estate settlement and caregiving, “I think women just feel like it’s a final act of love,” she said, even though the task itself can take time.
It is usually adult daughters who organize their parents’ funerals, Mysoor said. And they are also the ones who handle the paperwork after death, while going through the grief of losing a parent.
“In almost every family we serve at Alix, the person settling the estate is a woman,” Mysoor wrote in a recent LinkedIn post. “Often a daughter, often the eldest. She’s the one who arranges the funeral, then opens probate, then spends most of the year on the phone with banks, courts and agencies on behalf of someone she just lost.”
Lobos said her parents separated when she was a teenager, but she reconnected with her father when she got married. He fell ill and died shortly after, and Lobos settled his estate.
“My brother didn’t really know what to do. He kind of took my lead, and I don’t know if it was just because I was the oldest kid and (he) kind of assumed I was together,” she said. Regardless, Lobos said, “I ended up being a project manager not just for my life – my mother’s life, my father’s life, my children’s life, my husband’s life. It gets exhausting. But it’s not necessarily that I chose to sign up for it, it’s just a thing that happened.”
For many families, caregiving comes with a cycle of guilt
Lobos said her mother was first diagnosed with cancer in 2010. She was cancer-free for many years after chemotherapy and radiation, but when the cancer returned in 2022, Lobos’ mother was in her 70s and could no longer handle chemotherapy.
Her brother and sister-in-law lived with her mother, she said, and could sometimes help care for their mother. But Lobos still felt like she was her mother’s most active caregiver.
April Ibarra, a gerontologist and care consultant at Arlow, an AI-based app for caregivers, calls this shift from helping a parent to accumulating more and more caregiving responsibilities “caregiver drift.” It might start with getting groceries and medications, then turn into accompanying an aging parent to several doctor’s appointments per week. Most family caregivers who call her for a consultation are adult daughters caring for their aging parents, she said, and older daughters tend to be the default.
“And then once you start taking that role, it tends to evolve,” Ibarra said, adding that things can pile up, especially if the primary person doesn’t ask for help or communicate well with other family members. “It happens in a spiral, and that person ends up taking over much, if not all, of the care of the family.”
It was Lobos who had to have difficult conversations with his mother about moving from treatment to hospice. She then took care of everything related to her mother’s estate and finances after her death. Looking back, she said if she hadn’t done those things, she would have felt immense guilt.
“That’s my mom. And my mom was my best friend. She was the closest thing to me,” she said, adding that they shared a special bond and could read each other’s facial expressions at a glance. “It was hard for me to prioritize my own life because I was prioritizing other people’s lives. And then she felt guilty knowing that I was prioritizing my life for her. So I had the guilt that she felt guilty.”
Guilt and resentment are common among family caregivers, Ibarra said. She always tries to remind people – not just older daughters, but all caregivers – to ask for help when they need it and to try to plan ahead.
“Not all of this has to be done by one person,” she said.
Madeline Mitchell’s role covering women and the care economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Contact Madeline at memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch on X.
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