Divas That Care Network

Kinship Shift

• Divas That Care Network • Season 15 • Episode 46

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Come and listen to our Host, Candace Gish, as she chats with today's guest, Dr. Allison Alford, for our "Season of Shift: Women on the Edge of Reinvention" Podcast Series.
This series spotlights women who used this reflective season (Oct–Dec) to make major life pivots—career changes, endings, spiritual awakenings, and brave beginnings.

Dr. Allison Alford 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 and MA in Communication Studies from The University of Texas at Austin and nearly two decades of university-level teaching, Allison brings both academic depth and heartfelt clarity to every conversation about gender, identity, and relational responsibility.

Her forthcoming book, Good Daughtering (Dey Street Books/HarperCollins, 2026), invites readers to name and reframe the emotional, logistical, and cognitive labor daughters provide—labor that is deeply impactful yet rarely acknowledged. Drawing on years of qualitative research and hundreds of personal interviews, Allison offers a new vocabulary for understanding this powerful but often misunderstood role.

Currently a Clinical Associate Professor at Baylor University, Allison teaches communication and leadership to MBA and undergraduate students. She is known for her warm, thought- provoking style and is a sought-after guest for podcasts exploring motherhood, intergenerational relationships, feminist family studies, and women’s empowerment in midlife.

She lives in Texas with her husband and two teenagers and is currently booking podcast appearances and speaking engagements in anticipation of her upcoming book release.

Find Dr. Allison Alford online:

https://daughtering101.com/

https://www.facebook.com/p/Daughtering101-61564467700155/

Pre-order my book, Good Daughtering, out February 2026!

We explore the kinship shift—the moment adult daughters become the driving force of family connection—and how to honor care without “mothering your mother.” We name the third shift and share practical language to ease guilt, clarify roles, and communicate with grace.

• defining the kinship shift and changing power
• rejecting “mothering your mother” framing
• distance versus proximity and who does what
• four dimensions of daughtering: tasks, emotional, cognitive, identity
• tracing guilt to cultural scripts, not always parents
• the third shift and invisible labor at home and in community
• building shared language for family expectations
• one-bite-at-a-time communication for tough topics
• book details for Good Daughtering and social links

For more Divas That Care Network Episodes visit www.divasthatcare.com

SPEAKER_00:

It's Divas the Care Radio. Stories, strategies, and ideas to inspire positive change. Welcome to Divas that Care, a network of women committed to making our world a better place for everyone. This is a global movement for women, by women engaged in a collaborative effort to create a better world for future generations. To find out more about the movement, visit divasletcare.com after the show. Right now, though, stay tuned for another jolt of inspiration.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, hello everyone, and welcome back to the Divasat Care. My name is Candace Gish. If this is your very first time tuning into the Divasat Care, a huge, huge welcome to each and every one of you. We've been doing this now for over 15 years. We are listening to in over 30 countries around the world, and it is because of our amazing guests, our tribe, our amazing hosts on the network, and we're so grateful to be doing this. Um, and that's why we're so glad that you've joined us because we're hoping that you take these calls and you share them with as many friends and family as you can. All right, we are going to be interviewing and having on my podcast a brand new Diva. I'm beyond excited to have her on the show today. Her name is Dr. Alison Alford. Alison, welcome to the Divas at Care.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much, Candace. Thanks for having me here. I feel like it's such an honor to join this elite cadre of women who, you know, the guests who come on here and talk about all the things that really matter, that really matter to our souls.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, thank you so much. And we are beyond grateful that you're going to be here and chatting with me today. Alison, would you mind taking a couple of minutes here and introducing yourself to our listeners?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Like you said, I am a doctor. I have a PhD in communication studies, and I work as a professor at Baylor University currently. And my training is in family communication. So for more than a decade now, I've been thinking about researching and writing about the role of adult daughters in families. So when I say adult daughters, I'm really looking at women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, who have a parent or more than one parent, in-law, stepparent, et cetera, who are healthy and independent. And yet, as daughters, as women, we are still doing a lot of care, love. We're connecting with our families. So I research what that's like, what women say about it, and why women feel so strongly about that role in our lives.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh my goodness, that is absolutely beautiful. Well, I'm excited because today we're going to be doing a podcast and series called Season of Shift, Women on the Edge of Reinvention. And I think what we're going to be talking today about really is what you're going through and what you're talking about is the shift.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's such a um, it's it's such, you know, kismet that we're talking about this together because one of the things that I describe in my new book that's coming out next year, um, called Good Daughtering, I talk about something that I call the kinship shift. And the kinship shift is how as we're growing and changing, and our parent is getting older and changing, the way that we relate to each other through kinship, through our family dynamic, it shifts over time and how important it is for us to kind of visualize this shift over the decades of middle adulthood and into our parents' older adulthood, and thinking about what is it that becomes different? You know, when we are young women, especially when we're coming out of childhood and into young adulthood, our parents, our our mom or our dad or somebody important to us, they often have a really large presence, especially with some power dynamics and parenting. Um I'm making my hands have this, you know, big space. And we have this kind of small space in our relationship. We're still present, but we are uh maybe have a little bit less power or less activity in maintaining the connection. But then over time, over decades, as we get older and our parents get older, our participation grows and we become a lot of times the larger presence and the larger force of making a family connection. And our parents' level reduces. So a key element of that, something I think is really important, is that I reject the thought of mothering our mother, that I'm now the mother, I'm mothering my parent. Because ultimately we're never ever going to be the parent to our parent, you know. But I think what women are trying to say is I'm doing more of the care, I'm spending more energy, I'm a bigger presence, and my parent is a bit of a smaller presence in this connection, or they have a smaller capacity over time. And so that really is that shift, that shift that occurs that's natural over a lifespan, but sometimes we forget to pause and look at it and notice wow, things have really shifted in this balance between us.

SPEAKER_02:

I love how you just explained that. But a question that I have is do you find that there's a lot of people that struggle with that, that have a hard time accepting it?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, there's a it's a great question, you know. I think that um change is hard for all of us. And so when I talk to women, I often ask them, you know, what when did you notice that your relationship with your mom changed? And some of us are like, oh, well, I just turned around one day and I realized it was completely different. So we we're not always very good at noticing the small shifting over time. We turn around and think, oh my gosh, things between us are just radically different than they were when I was 25. And so we don't see it until we're almost past this threshold of where we feel like we have any control over it. So we can feel a little bit powerless. And sometimes when we notice that a relationship has changed with our parent, we can also decide, I don't like this. I don't want to be the one who's kind of in charge in this relationship. I don't want to be the one who has to decide everything, do everything, show up all the time. I'd really like to go back to being the in the easier, smaller role, but that's not what life has handed us. Um, so part of what is hard for women is having a new and different role as we shift with our parents over a lifespan. And the other part is sometimes grieving that we don't get to be the carefree version of ourselves that we used to be, and now we have to be more responsible and spend more effort, energy, and resources on our family connections.

SPEAKER_02:

Can I ask you, is it different with people that are like if your mothers are close to you in the fact geographically, or if people are farther away that you don't see them as much?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. The research shows that the person who's most likely to care for elders in in their elderly years is the child who's closest. And that could be a daughter or a son. Um, but if it's daughter, if there's a daughter and a son available, it'll be the daughter or the daughter-in-law, right? But I think that what's so important for us to be aware of is that even when you're far away geographically, or even if you are far away, meaning you don't feel close to your parent, you don't have an easier friendly connection with them, you are still doing daughtering. And so what I found in my research is that when daughters think of doing daughtering, which daughtering is what women do in the relationship with our parents to keep the family connected. When you ask women about daughtering, most people respond with tasks. Tasks are things like, I went over to her house and took a meal, I planned a holiday event, I um fixed her Netflix because the remote control wasn't working, um, a lot of tasks. But then as you start to have these deeper discussions, you begin to un you know, to peel back the layers, and women start talking about a lot of other forms of daughtering that we're doing. So um I think of the the way that we do daughtering in four different ways. So the first one is tasks that we do. That's just physically showing up, doing something, or even paying for something. The second thing that we do is emotional. There's a lot of emotional aspect to being a daughter. And that is listening, soothing. Maybe it means avoiding an argument or going to battle for your parent, you know, with Aunt Susie, who's making her upset, and you go, you know, deal with that for her. Um the third way is cognitive or thinking. A lot of being a daughter is about thinking about your parent. It could be worrying, it could be planning for the far distant future. You know, maybe a listener who's listening right now, they're 30 years old and their parent is 52 and they're in great health, they travel, they work, they are fine, they're independent, but you're already thinking about what they'll need in two decades, and you're planning and you're saving money. And um, so there's thinking work. And the last category of daughtering is identity work. So, how am I a daughter, whether my parent is around or not? What makes me feel like a daughter? How do I represent our family? How do I keep our legacy going? And so your question, Candace, was really about how do daughters, you know, what's different with daughters who live farther away geographically? And I would say those daughters are still doing a lot of daughtering, but maybe more on the emotional, cognitive, and identity side, whereas the daughters who live nearby are doing a lot of the tasks. So I want to charge each of your listeners to think about what is it that I'm doing? What are all the ways that I can see daughtering showing up in my life? And I want to give myself credit for how that takes up my energy and my resources and my mental space to give that type of um benefit to my parent and to our family.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, that's wonderful. I think a lot of people feel guilty if they're not close to their parents. For example, my mom and I don't live close to each other, but I really want to be there, but I can't be there. So I think I'm then I'm for I'm there for her um when she needs me, but not to do the things that I'd like to do for her.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that is the so true of so many women. You know, we want to be close to our parents, our mom, our dad, or it could be our in-laws, our stepparents. And yet we can't always live geographically near to where the people are, so that we can't just do things like let's go have a shopping day, or let's go have a coffee chat, or um, you know, let me help you clean out your closets. And um, it can make us feel guilty, especially if we have a sibling who is doing those things and we feel like, oh man, they either get to do it, or we feel bad, like you're doing all the work and I'm not doing anything. Um, and what I again say to daughters is the first step is thinking about all the wonderful things that you are doing. Um, because daughters, what I've found often struggle feeling like I'm not good enough, I'm not doing enough, I'm not showing up enough, and um just this feeling of not enoughness. And in order to combat that, we have to start to see daughtering in a whole new way. We have to start to recognize and give ourselves credit for the ways that we are thinking of our parent, loving our parent, planning for our parent, sending things, doing money, and really doing a lot of emotion work. So in my family, my sister lives down the street from my parents. That means that she gets to do a lot of other things with them that I don't get to do because I don't live there. Um, but I am really clear about giving myself credit for what I do well. And what I do well is really good phone calls. And I tell stories and I laugh and I ask questions like, hey, mom, can you help me with my plants? What should I feed this plant? What kind of water or sunlight does it need? Yeah. And I do those things well, and I give myself credit for offering something in that relationship that's special.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh my goodness, Allison. This is actually a really wonderful call. And the fact that it almost feels like you're alleviating the guilt. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think that you're right. There's a lot of guilt in daughtering, and we should ask ourselves where that comes from, you know, because um, another important thing to notice is it's not necessarily coming from your mom or your dad. They're not necessarily the ones who feel bad about you living your dream and off having a beautiful life. Sometimes it's coming to us from a societal message that daughters are supposed to do stuff. We're supposed to show up, we're supposed to do more and be there and um be this little, you know, caring person who's giving a certain amount of hours or certain amount of visits. And we should really probe that and say, where does that come from? And do I agree with that? And can I give myself credit for other ways that I show up? And can I even have a conversation with my parents and find out maybe they don't even want that from me? And I am just making it up and making myself feel bad because I've absorbed these messages from TV or movies or the news. But our particular family doesn't have to look like every other family. We can negotiate what's right for us.

SPEAKER_02:

That's beautiful, absolutely beautiful. I love that. Um, and you were mentioning in your book that there's different types of shifts. And I'd like to briefly talk about third shift, if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, this is a different kind of shift, the third shift. Yeah, I think this is a fascinating topic. So the third shift is um is not something I came up with, but it has been documented and researched by feminist um writers. So if we think of um this time, we're thinking of shift in terms of work. So we have salaried work or we have shift work. Okay. And so writers talked about how there's the first shift of your day. I go to my job, and then the second shift, I get off of work and I go home and I make dinner and take care of the family and I take care of the house. So we have our first shift of the day, our second shift of the day, and then we have what these feminist writers talk about, which is the third shift, which is extra stuff that women are expected to do without getting any credit for it. And the third shift, or the the the rest of the stuff we have to do often includes caring for our parents, participating in our community, taking care of our neighbors, thinking of extended family members, and these are what we might call invisible labor. So they're things that women are supposed to be doing, know how to do, be good at doing, but you're definitely not getting paid for them. And you have to get them all done before you can go to sleep. But if we only think about the work that that we do in terms of work, you know, business career stuff and home stuff, house stuff, then we're missing this huge area where women expend our resources. And of course, we're not here to bash men, um, but we can also notice that men don't do as much of that third shift as women do. And often men don't even do as much of the second shift, which is the household work, the cooking, the cleaning, the childcare, the um tending to relationships. So men are allowed really to focus more on their first shift, which is their career, and then they can relax a little bit. And women are not only expected to excel at our first shift, but also the second shift and the third shift. So, what's important about this concept is for your listeners to think about, gee, I'm really doing a lot of stuff. And I had not given myself credit for how it takes up space in my brain, how it takes hours out of the day, how I make phone calls and have to speak to people like the neighbor next door and be uh congenial and delighted, and I have to be upbeat. And um, these things can drain my resources. Now, we're not saying, you and I are not saying here that all of these things are bad, right? Getting to go to a career job is a privilege. Getting to have kids and a family and a home, it's beautiful. It's a privilege. We love being married and having these things. And getting to be a neighbor and a community member and an adult daughter is a beautiful privilege. All we're saying here is let's notice how much work it is and just give ourselves credit for that so that we're not wandering around feeling like people who are never doing enough and and you know, are bashing ourselves.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I I like that because you do. You sometimes you feel that you you're constantly doing something. I found that when I was younger, there was a lot more people that would be involved in things. And I find that nowadays you don't see that as much. And I always wonder do people feel that animosity? Do they feel like they don't want to because now they feel like they're doing too much? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, you're highlighting something so important, Candace, which is that we struggle to talk about things when we don't have the language or the nuance or the little words for what we're trying to describe. Like you're saying that you go out and you volunteer and give your time because it makes you feel good. It makes you feel like you have a deeper sense of purpose and it benefits your life. Um, but then when you talk about it with your husband, or we're talking about it now, it can be kind of like, I'm not sure if I'm saying it right, or I don't know if I'm getting my whole point across. And what that reveals is that we don't have enough good words for talking about the nuances, the careful little bits of what's important in our lives as women. And particularly, we we don't have enough language for talking about how we do daughtering and families or how we're doing daughtering as a community member to our elder neighbor or to our um you know aunties in the community, and how giving to others is a purposeful, soul-fulfilling thing. And so um maybe there's been a shift in our culture to um, you know, where people approach this differently. I don't know, I couldn't say because I haven't done the research on that, but what I can say is that we can shift our own mindsets about how we show up in our lives and what's important to us and where we're spending our time and energy if we communicate about it with our loved ones. So taking the time to talk to our family members about what's meaningful to us, here's how I show up in my family, here's why. Talking to our siblings about how we show up for our parents or how we show up in the big group. So the more that we talk about how we want to show up in our lives, the more that we gain the language, the nuance, the understanding of those small moments, and we can come together and really know each other better, feel better, remove that guilt, feel like we're doing enough, feel like we're getting credit for what we're doing, and um demonstrate that even though I'm talking about labor and work, I'm also talking about love. I love my parents, I love my community, I love showing up for others. So it's like I'm trying to just talk about it in a multifaceted way. I'm not trying to complain about it, I'm just talking about it. And we need that shift into discussing things that are important to us and using language that's important to us. And um, that's something I talk about in the book. Uh, the book is uh Good Daughtering, and it comes out in February of 2026. And I just know that it has so much language and insights, and it also has activities in there that would really help your listeners to explore their relationships.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, thank you so much, Allison. This is beautiful. Do you have social media that um our listeners can go and check out so they can get a copy of the book when it does come out?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. So the book is good daughtering. You can pre-order it at any time. It's already up there on Amazon and all of those links. Um, and my social media is at Daughtering101. So website, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook for Daughtering 101. And um I've got all the news about how the book drops, and I would love for your listeners to get a hold of it.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, that's wonderful. And a last-minute thing, Allison. So I always ask our amazing guests if they have any tips, any tools, things they want to leave our listeners with today to maybe inspire them.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I would love to share with your listeners one of my tips, and that is for how to communicate with your loved ones. You know, sometimes it can be um feel like a big task to try to get things across to other people. And maybe you are um, you know, missing them. So you send this big long text message, or maybe you're in an argument a little bit, or maybe there's something important you want to talk about. And people approach these conversations as these big things that we need to get across. And my tip to you is take it one bite at a time. You can't eat a whole pizza by shoving the whole thing in your mouth. So just take one bite at a time and recognize that healthy relationships, effective relationships are about communicating just a little bit at a time. And as a daughter, the more you show up one bite at a time over time, the better that relationship will get. And it will benefit you, it will benefit your parents, your siblings, and ultimately it benefits society when we have strong families.

SPEAKER_02:

That is a great tip. Thank you so much. I had such a great time chatting with you today.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much, Candace. I really love being here and chatting with you.

SPEAKER_02:

Wonderful. And a huge shout out to all of our amazing listeners. I want you guys too to know how much we appreciate each and every one of you. Please take this, send it to your friends and family. Um, also, all of you, make sure you do something kind today. The world has a lot of ups and downs right now. And the Divas That Care is all about promoting kindness and respect for one another. So please go out there and do something kind for somebody. Until next time, everyone.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for listening. This show was brought to you by Divas That Care. Connect with us on Facebook, on Instagram, and of course on divas that care.com, where you can subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss a thing.