Somewhere along the way, many young women realised that growing up has become no longer optional; it has become urgent. While still figuring out who they were, they found themselves carrying responsibilities that felt far heavier than their age: supporting family decisions, worrying about finances, navigating unstable job markets, or holding emotional space for others when their own lives felt uncertain.
This is emotional adulthood for many young women in Nepal today. It isn’t chosen. It is inherited, expected, and is quietly becoming normalised.
When Growing Up Isn’t a Choice
For many young women, adulthood arrives earlier than expected; not through choice, but through timing. Responsibilities that typically come later in life are getting introduced much sooner. The eldest daughter often learns care before she has been cared for herself. The one who studies “well” is seen as a long-term plan, carrying expectations far beyond her years. The one who migrates is asked to succeed quickly, to provide, to stay strong. And the one who stays is expected to be patient, adaptable, and emotionally steady, often long before she has had the space to explore her own needs.
These expectations exist within a larger national context of uncertainty. Limited employment opportunities, rising living costs, migration pressures, and growing gap between education and meaningful work. Young women are often told to be patient and resilient, even as systems around them feel fragile and unpredictable.
The Country The Young Girls Are Growing Up In
In recent years, Nepal has witnessed a visible shift in how young people engage with the country’s realities. Gen Z voices have grown louder; questioning governance, demanding accountability, and speaking openly about frustration, exhaustion, and disillusionment. While these movements may not always centre gender explicitly, they form an emotional landscape that young women inhabit deeply.
Many young women stand at a difficult intersection: encouraged to be hopeful and ambitious, yet repeatedly confronted with structural barriers. They are emotionally attuned to the country’s instability, carrying not only their personal anxieties but also collective ones; about the future, about fairness, about whether staying, leaving, or returning will ever feel like the “right” choice.
This constant awareness accelerates emotional maturity. When the ground beneath you feels uncertain, you learn to brace yourself early.
The Invisible Emotional Labor of Early Adulthood
This early growing up is rarely visible, but it is deeply felt. It comes with invisible emotional labor, the expectation that young women will manage both their emotions and also the emotional climate of their families. They are asked, often implicitly, to reassure anxious parents, absorb unspoken worries, and translate uncertainty into calm. Their ability to stay composed is praised as “maturity”, even when it is born out of necessity rather than readiness.
A university student worries not only about exams, but about whether her degree will lead anywhere in a country where opportunities feel increasingly uncertain. A young professional feels uneasy about resting, haunted by the thought that her family sacrificed too much for her education for her to slow down now. A woman preparing to migrate carries excitement alongside fear, and a quiet grief she has not yet learned to name.
This kind of emotional labor does not appear on academic transcripts or CVs. Yet it shapes mental health profoundly. Over time, the pressure to remain emotionally steady, to be the one who understands, adapts and endures, can lead to exhaustion, anxiety, and a persistent sense of responsibility for outcomes far beyond one’s control.
Young men, too, are affected by economic uncertainty, migration pressure, and early responsibility. But the emotional expectations placed on young women are often different. While boys may be allowed frustration or withdrawal, girls are more often expected to regulate emotions, maintain harmony, and remain grateful. This gendered expectation, to be emotionally available, accommodating, and resilient, adds an extra layer of labor that frequently goes unnamed.
Naming this difference is neither about competition nor about blame. It is about visibility. Because only when we recognise how emotional responsibility is unevenly distributed can we begin to imagine forms of support that meet young people where they actually are.
The Psychological Cost of Growing Up Too Fast
Psychologists describe this experience as role strain, when individuals take on responsibilities before they have the emotional resources or support to sustain them. Over time, this can lead to chronic stress, anxiety, emotional numbness, or burnout. Many young women internalise this exhaustion as personal failure, rather than recognising it as a response to prolonged pressure within uncertain systems.
What makes this harder is the absence of space to grieve. Youth become something to rush through. Mistakes feel expensive. Rest feels undeserved. Asking for help feels like weakness.
Between Responsibility and Selfhood
One of the quiet losses of early emotional adulthood is identity. When survival and responsibility take centre stage, there is little room left to ask: What do I want? Who am I becoming? What brings me joy?
Many young women describe feeling suspended between versions of themselves, no longer children, but not fully supported as adults. Expected to be emotionally wise, financially sensible, and endlessly adaptable, while still being grateful and complaint. This in-between space can be deeply lonely.
Naming the Weight Without Blame
Acknowledging this reality is not about rejecting responsibility or tradition. It is about telling the truth. About recognising that resilience should not be demanded without care, and maturity should not come at the cost of emotional safety.
Young women need language for what they are experiencing, not labels like lazy, dramatic, or ungrateful. What many are feeling is exhaustion from being emotionally overextended in a country that is still finding its footing.
What Helps When Adulthood Comes Early
There is no single solution, but a few practices can soften the weight.
Separating responsibility from worth – Being dependable does not mean your needs matter less
Allowing grief for what was missed – Youth, ease, and certainty are losses worth naming.
Creating peer spaces – Honest conversations with others navigating similar pressures reduce isolation.
Redefining strength – Strength can include rest, asking for help, and saying “this is hard.”
Questioning urgency – Not every life decision needs to be finalised immediately, even when the world feels unstable.
Growing up fast does not mean growing up whole. Emotional adulthood, when forced too early, can fracture parts of the self that need time, safety, and curiosity to form. As Nepal continues to change and as young people continue to question, resist, and imagine differently, perhaps the invitation for young women is not to become tougher, but to become kinder with themselves. Emotional wellbeing begins when we stop measuring maturity by how much we endure, and start asking how well we are supported.
Because no one should have to grow up faster than they were ready for, especially not alone.
