The Good Girl Trap: Emotional Labor, Power, and What We Teach Girls About Love

Before we were women trying to unlearn people pleasing, self abandonment, and responsibility for everyone else’s feelings, many of us were little girls learning that being “good” meant being easy for everyone else.

“She’s such a good girl.”

“She’s so mature for her age.”

“She never gives us a moment of trouble.”

“I never have to worry about her.”

“She’s always been my little helper.”

We say these things like compliments. And, sometimes they are. But I think we need to get a little more curious about what we mean when we call a girl “good.”

Does good mean kind? Thoughtful? Compassionate? Curious? Brave?

Or does good sometimes mean quiet, agreeable, helpful, easily managed, and unlikely to make anyone else uncomfortable?

Because those are very different things.

Research suggests that gender differences in how children express emotion and how adults respond to those emotions can begin surprisingly early. One longitudinal study found girls expressed more submissive emotions than boys as early as preschool, with parental responses potentially contributing to those differences over time. Girls are not born believing that everyone else's comfort matters more than their own. But many of us get very, very good at it. 

When Being a “Good Girl” Means Being Good for Everyone Else

From a very young age, girls receive messages about helpfulness. We give them dolls to nurture, kitchens to cook in, babies to care for, and toys built around domestic and relational roles with easy bake ovens and toy vacuums.

We praise them for helping, being mature, noticing what someone else needs, and for being responsible. None of those things are inherently bad.

Helpfulness is good. Kindness is good. Attentiveness is good. Manners are good. Caring about other people is good.

But manners do not require passivity.

Kindness does not require self abandonment.

And being helpful should not require a girl to become responsible for everybody else's emotional experience. This is where the “good girl” can slowly become the woman who walks into a room and immediately starts scanning it.

Who is upset?

Who needs something?

Is everyone getting along?

Did that text sound angry?

Should I apologize?

Should I make this easier for them?

What can I do so nobody is disappointed in me?

Over time, “How will this make them feel?” can become a much more familiar question than “How do I feel?”

That is emotional labor. And for some of us, it is more than social conditioning. It can also become a survival skill.

If we grew up in an environment where someone's anger, withdrawal, disappointment, or unpredictability meant something bad might happen, learning to anticipate other people's needs could genuinely help keep us safer. We avoided chaos, hurt, and anger by being useful, pleasant, not needing too much from our caregivers. We became experts in how to make ourselves smaller when the room required it. These skills were adaptive, surviving a situation we couldn’t change or control with fawning behaviors. However, the problem is when something that once helped us stay safe becomes the price of admission for every relationship we have.

Smallness is not the goal.

The Good Girl Script Meets Power and Control

This is where the conversation becomes bigger than individual families.

Patriarchy has long rewarded women for being nurturing, accommodating, self-sacrificing, agreeable, and emotionally available while punishing women who are perceived as too loud, demanding, sexual, ambitious, angry, difficult, or independent.

To be crystal clear: this does not mean good girl socialization causes domestic violence.

But, the two are part of a culture of violence that emphasizes power and control.  

Abuse is the responsibility of the person choosing to use abusive behavior. Domestic violence involves patterns of behavior used to gain or maintain power and control, and it can include physical and sexual violence as well as intimidation, isolation, financial control, monitoring, threats, manipulation, and emotional abuse. 

Gender inequality and harmful gender norms are also recognized by the World Health Organization as important drivers of violence against women and girls. 

That matters when we think about what girls are taught to interpret as love.

Because love is not control.

Not romantic love.

Not parental love.

Not familial love.

Not religious love.

Someone loving us does not entitle them to our obedience.

Someone loving us does not mean we owe them access to our body, time, money, privacy, choices, relationships, or silence. And if a relationship can only remain peaceful when one person is smaller, quieter, less powerful, more obedient, or afraid of upsetting the other person, we need to be willing to talk about the difference between love and control.

We do not owe anyone smallness in exchange for love.

Why Setting Boundaries Can Feel So Dangerous

This is also why I get frustrated when we reduce everything to “you just need better boundaries.”

Knowing what a healthy boundary is and feeling safe enough to set one are two completely different things.

If our nervous system learned somewhere along the way that someone being upset with us means danger, setting a boundary can feel terrifying even when we intellectually know we have every right to set it. Folks experiencing abuse are not able to set boundaries because of the inherent power differential; therefore, even if we have left an abusive situation, our nervous system may still equate assertiveness with danger.  In cases without abuse, learning a new pattern to replace the old can take time, intentionality, and effort. At first when we say no and someone gets disappointed our brain may go: 

Fix it.

Explain yourself.

Soften it.

Apologize.

Offer something else.

Make sure they aren't mad.

Make yourself useful again.

Make yourself good again.

Again, that discomfort does not necessarily mean the boundary is wrong. Sometimes discomfort after setting a boundary is simply evidence that we're doing something new.

And I want to be particularly careful here when we're talking about domestic violence. Someone currently experiencing abuse may face very real danger when asserting independence, setting boundaries, or leaving. The National Domestic Violence Hotline notes that leaving can be an especially dangerous period because an abusive partner may escalate when they feel their control slipping. This is why survivor centered support and individualized safety planning matter far more than telling someone to “just leave.” 

The goal is not to turn good girls into women who don't care about anyone else.

The goal is agency.

We can be kind and have boundaries.

We can have manners and disagree.

We can help someone without becoming responsible for them.

We can love someone and still say no.

We can allow another person to be disappointed without immediately abandoning ourselves to make their discomfort disappear.

And we can teach the girls growing up behind us that being easy to manage was never supposed to be the goal.

Being a good girl is not the goal. Being a whole person is.

If you recognize yourself in the woman who learned to manage everyone else's feelings and needs before her own, therapy can be a place to start untangling helpfulness from self abandonment and boundaries from danger. Sage Holistic Counseling provides virtual therapy for adults throughout Texas. You can schedule a free consultation at Sage Holistic Counseling.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, personalized safety planning and confidential support are available through The National Domestic Violence Hotline.