More than half of girls are scared of adulthood. As a mom, I get it -- and I refuse to let that be the end of the story.

By Sara Goldstein
Updated Apr. 20, 2026

My daughter is a teenager, which means I spend a non-trivial amount of time watching her absorb the world and wondering what exactly she’s making of it. The climate. The economy. The news. The particular exhaustion of being online all the time while also being expected to have a personality. It’s a lot to carry, even for those of us who’ve had a few more decades to build up some scar tissue.

So when I saw the new data from Girl Scouts of the USA, I wasn’t shocked — but I did feel it in my chest. More than half of girls ages 5 to 13 (54%) say adulthood feels scary. That number climbs as they get older: 41% of the youngest girls (ages 5 to 7) feel this way, but by ages 8 to 10, it’s jumped to 62%. By ages 11 to 13, it holds steady at 60%.
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“Today’s girls are navigating a complex mix of loneliness, constant comparison, and pressure to keep up,” says Sarah Keating, Vice President of Girl and Volunteer Experience at GSUSA. “Many feel tethered to their phones out of fear of missing out, while also holding themselves to high expectations to fit in and succeed.”

What worries Keating most isn’t just the anxiety itself — it’s how early it’s setting in. “Girls as young as five are already forming perceptions of adulthood as something overwhelming,” she notes. But she’s also clear-eyed about the upside of this data: now that we have it, we can do something with it.
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More:
https://www.mother.ly/parenting/girls-scared-of-growing-up/