When Black Girlhood Disappears Into Black Womanhood
What do we miss when Black girls are treated more like adults than children?
Posted May 26, 2026 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
In conversations about race and gender , I often hear the phrase “Black women and girls.” At first glance, the pairing makes sense. Black girls and Black women are deeply connected through shared histories, cultural traditions, social realities, and systems of inequality. Black feminist scholarship has long emphasized these connections, often as a way of resisting invisibility.
But lately, I have found myself wondering what happens when Black girls are continually understood through Black womanhood before they are allowed to fully exist as girls.
As a developmental psychologist who studies puberty , identity , and the social experiences of Black girls, I spend a great deal of time thinking about how development is interpreted by others. Adultification is often discussed as something that happens in schools, disciplinary settings, media portrayals, or interpersonal interactions. Black girls are perceived as older , less innocent, more mature, and more responsible than their peers. Research has shown that these perceptions shape how adults respond to Black girls emotionally, socially, and behaviorally.
But I wonder if adultification also happens conceptually. Sometimes, it seems that Black girlhood disappears into Black womanhood long before adulthood actually arrives.
In research, practice, and public conversations, Black girls are often discussed alongside Black women in ways that flatten developmental distinctions. A Black girl talking back in class may be interpreted not as a child struggling with emotion regulation , peer dynamics, embarrassment , or developmental impulsivity, but as aggressive, defiant, or having an attitude associated with adult stereotypes of Black women . A Black girl who develops early may suddenly be treated as though she is responsible for managing adults’ or peers’ reactions to her body. As a result, she is being dress-coded more frequently, told that clothing is “inappropriate,” accused of “seeking attention ,” or expected to “know better.” Meanwhile, cognitively and emotionally, she may still be navigating childhood. The body becomes read through adult-coded meanings before development catches up.
Black girls do not simply experience smaller versions of Black women’s experiences. They experience developmentally distinct forms of racialized gendering with their own vulnerabilities, social pressures, and identity processes.
And yet, theories developed to explain the experiences of Black women are often extended downward to explain Black girls’ lives without fully considering what may be developmentally unique about girlhood itself. Black feminist thought has powerfully challenged deficit narratives by centering Black women’s agency, resistance, wisdom , and survival.
But when translated directly onto Black girls, this can sometimes create expectations that girls are exceptionally resilient , mature, emotionally equipped, or socially aware. This can unintentionally mirror adultification itself. A Black girl who needs protection, softness, reassurance, or emotional scaffolding may become less visible because her competence is presumed too early. In many contexts, Black girls’ pubertal development is interpreted not as a normative developmental transition but as entry into socially recognizable womanhood. Breast development, body shape changes, menstruation, or appearance shifts become socially read through adult meanings.
In some cases, Black girls become framed primarily as “future Black women,” rather than as young people actively making meaning of their bodies, relationships, identities, and social worlds in the present. A lot of developmental language about Black girls implicitly asks, How are they preparing for adulthood? How are they resisting oppression? How are they surviving systems? How are they becoming empowered women? These are valuable questions. But they orient attention toward futurity rather than present developmental experience. Black girls become “women-in-training” rather than children whose identities are actively unfolding in ways that are not reducible to adulthood.
The distinction may seem subtle, but its implications are profound.
When Black girls are consistently understood through adult frameworks, we may unintentionally miss the early developmental experiences that shape later outcomes. We may overlook the ways girls interpret social messages before they have the language to name them. We may also underestimate how early Black girls begin navigating expectations associated with womanhood.
Many Black girls are often expected to care for siblings, regulate others emotionally, or “be strong” at very young ages. People may praise this as maturity, but developmentally, it can involve emotional burden, reduced space for vulnerability, or premature responsibility. Blak girls' distress may be overlooked because they are perceived as resilient, independent, or strong enough to handle it.
These experiences matter not simply because they predict adulthood, but because they shape childhood itself.
I sometimes worry that when we collapse Black girls into Black womanhood too quickly, we unintentionally reproduce the very processes we seek to critique, the adultification of Black girls. Black girls become seen as older before they are older. More knowing before they are allowed not to know. More resilient before they are allowed softness, uncertainty, or care.
Even within scholarship intended to uplift Black girls, there can be a tendency to focus heavily on survival, strength, and resistance while paying less attention to ordinary developmental needs: confusion, experimentation, emotional vulnerability, play, imagination , or the desire to simply be young.
To be clear, this is not an argument against connecting the experiences of Black girls and Black women. Those connections are important, historically grounded, and often deeply affirming. But continuity should not come at the expense of developmental specificity.
Black girlhood deserves to be understood as more than a prelude to womanhood. It deserves its own theories, its own questions, and its own language.
Perhaps one of the most important things developmental science can do is resist the urge to rush Black girls toward adulthood conceptually, socially, or institutionally. Perhaps we need to spend more time asking what Black girlhood means on its own terms. Not only what Black girls will become.
But who they already are.
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Rona Carter, Ph.D. , an associate professor at the University of Michigan.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.