The Infantilization Of Women: Do We Really Want To Stay Forever Young?

She can either be fun, flirty, and free—so long as she doesn’t grow serious, rooted, or something of substance. Or she can be sweet, submissive, and silent—so long as she doesn’t grow bold, articulate, or intellectually formed. Both discourage maturity and encourage an eternal adolescence. 

Whether she’s praised for staying quiet at Bible study or applauded for “living her truth” on Instagram, the result is the same: women are not being formed for strength. One is rewarded for compliance, the other for performance. Neither is invited to mature. Both are expected to remain emotionally driven, easily influenced, and quietly dependent.

Pop culture hands her a script of eternal girlhood: sexual freedom, aesthetic obsession, and detachment masked as empowerment. The church, in many corners, hands her an apron and a devotional and calls it discipleship—offering emotional comfort but withholding theological weight. These aren’t opposite visions. They’re twin strategies with the same result: women who are unchallenged, underdeveloped, and unprepared to carry lasting influence in the home, the church, or the world.

Forever 21: Spiritually and Emotionally

Too often, women are pushed to choose between two incomplete versions of womanhood. One celebrates emotional chaos as authenticity. The other rewards docility as virtue. She is told she can be sexually liberated or spiritually silenced. One says, “Express yourself, no matter the cost.” The other says, “Obey quietly, and you’ll be rewarded.” Neither teaches strength. Neither prepares her for responsibility.

She can party into her thirties or pray her way through a pastel pink watered-down devotional, but in neither world is she consistently challenged to mature. One encourages self-indulgence, the other encourages passivity. But both, in different ways, discourage her from becoming a woman of substance, strength, and spiritual depth.

Pretty, Pink, and Perpetually Dependent

We don’t just tolerate underdevelopment anymore, we monetize it.

“Girl dinner.” “Girl math.” “I’m just a girl.” These aren’t just quirky trends—they’re branding strategies. Social media doesn’t teach womanhood. It teaches self-marketing. Women are encouraged to curate excuses viewing “adulting” as a chore.

Social media is the new catechism, and its message is clear: stay self-focused, stay emotional, but above all, stay dependent. On trends. On brands. On validation. On capitalism. Women are rewarded for remaining in a pre-adult state—one where autonomy is aesthetic and maturity is a threat.

The result? A generation that can name its traumas but not its core values and beliefs. That can perform self-care but not practice self-sacrifice. That can build a brand but not a life and certainly not a family. That simply can not think deeply or critically for themselves.

Holy and Helpless

And yet the church, which should be the counterculture, too often mirrors the same dynamic, just with better intentions. Where are the women of the Word? Today’s women’s ministries are more likely to hand out coloring sheets than commentaries. Where theology is too often seen as “for the men” because “women can not comprehend” or “have no interest” in biblical truth or orthodoxy.

The church doesn’t always mean to infantilize women. But when women are offered no direction, just the expectation to get married and manage a household, it leaves women underprepared for real discipleship. Many churches still separate women from theological rigor, shepherding them toward devotionals instead of doctrine. Female “Bible teachers” tell them to find their worth, not develop their understanding of systematic theology. Women are discipled in self-worth and spiritual gift quizzes, not in sound doctrine.

Too often, the church rushes young women toward marriage without first forming them in maturity. They are married off emotionally underdeveloped, ill-equipped to nurture the next generation well, or to be the kind of wise, grounded partner who can build a household and stand beside a husband in strength, not just sentiment.

And so the woman who could’ve raised saints, shaped minds, and discipled nations is handed a Pinterest board and told to host brunch. She’s not formed; she’s managed. Not entrusted with weight, but handed glitter. The church doesn’t ask her to rise—it asks her to decorate. And the hunger in her for substance, for challenge, for calling? It’s spiritual starvation misdiagnosed as contentment.

The Business of Keeping Women Young

Why does this happen? Because small-minded women are easy to sell to and easier to manipulate.

From skincare brands to social media platforms to pulpits with watered-down theology, there’s a shared incentive to keep women consuming, not becoming. Culture and commerce need women to stay "forever young." Emotionally volatile women consume more. Spiritually confused women share shallow self-help Instagram sliders parading as “theology of self” on their stories. Unformed women outsource their everyday life decisions to influencers with no real-world experience.

The beauty industry thrives not on celebrating age, but in resisting it. There’s no such thing as “aging gracefully” anymore. We have forgotten how to make every season elegant. Wrinkles are framed as problems. Gray hairs as moral failings. “Anti-aging” isn’t a medical term, it’s a business model. Time is treated as the enemy. Maturity, as decline.

We spend thousands on creams, serums, and injectable enhancements to hide visible wisdom, but hesitate to invest in biblical literacy or financial wisdom or mentorship. We spend hours scrolling reels for advice and never crack open the Word. We call it self-care, but it’s often a frantic form of self-maintenance.

The grown woman sees through this.

She chooses quality over novelty—polyester marketing doesn’t fool her when she knows she’s made for cashmere. She chooses a husband not for chemistry alone, but for kingdom character. She budgets, she tithes, she invests, stewarding well. She disciplines her thoughts. She guards her heart. She teaches her children the truth, not just affirmations.

This isn’t rigidity. It’s adulthood. And it’s what our culture doesn’t know how to market and our women’s ministries need to re-teach.

Grit, Grace, and Grown Womanhood

The tragedy isn’t just that women are stuck in girlhood, it’s that no one dares to tell them to grow up, and even fewer are willing to show them how. We’ve replaced discipleship with emotional appeasement, traded calling for glamoured laziness, and handed them curated aesthetics in place of real formation. We didn’t just lower the bar, we painted it pink and covered it in glitter.

Feminism sold them a knockoff version of independence—cheap, shallow, and performative—and withheld the tools for real strength. Cheered on their freedom while quietly stripping away their fortitude. And now we’re left with a generation of women who are anxious, unanchored, and spiritually starving.

We don’t need more thirty-year-old “girls.” We need women who have matured. Who are not afraid of doctrine or diapers, boardrooms or Bibles. Women who can hold both compassion and conviction. Who are emotionally resilient and spiritually vigorous; women who see through the culture’s lies and dig deep into the Word.

The church should be the place where womanhood is taught from a young age, not flattened. Where women are invited to carry weight, not just casseroles. Where they are taught how to exegete Romans 9, identify false doctrines, contend for the faith, and raise children wisely. To speak with conviction and compassion. To suffer well and serve deeply. To think critically and live courageously.

The culture won’t offer that. It can’t. Because real womanhood can’t be bought, branded, or bottlenecked into a trend when its source is ultimately found in Scripture.

What we need is a return to mature, meaningful womanhood—one that is neither soft nor shrill, neither driven by aesthetics nor crippled by anxiety. A kind of womanhood with gravity. With grit. With God.

We need women’s ministries that do more than host social clubs marketed as Bible studies; they must disciple minds. Ministries that teach theology and spiritual discernment with clarity. That applies Scripture to real life to build a vision, communicate with strength, manage money, date with wisdom, and steward both home and calling. We must raise young women who set goals, think critically, and grow in emotional resilience. We must train mothers to heal what was broken, reverse generational trauma, and invest deeply in the next generation, because formation doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through women who are equipped, encouraged, and unafraid to grow.

Girlhood was never meant to be permanent. It was meant to be passed through—beautifully, but briefly. And in an age obsessed with staying young forever, the most rebellious thing a woman can do is become one.