Understanding Child Development

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Black girls are often treated as older and more mature than they really are.

The language we use can shape how people see and respond to Black girls.

Seeing Black girls as “grown” too early can hide their need for care and support.

Black girls deserve to be children while growing into who they are.

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,........

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