Originally a comment by Sastra on Well knock me down with a feather.

I think adults have accepted Great Truth Gender Pediatrics in part because of the popularity of child-centered parenting (which may also involve child-centered schooling, child-centered therapy, and, ultimately, child-centered spirituality.) Though we need an antidote to the authoritarian “obey me without question” boogeyman-man method of parental control, the belief that children are fragile, unique flowers needing mostly love and acceptance to bloom can deteriorate rapidly into nonsense. In our rush to validate their feelings, we treat kids like miniature adults— which, as you point out, they aren’t.

Our own recollections of what it was like to be a child might actually be part of the problem here, since it’s not uncommon for us to read our adult emotions and knowledge back into our memories. That we “always knew” or “deeply felt” such-and-such is often influenced by hindsight. Our recollections aren’t pure records from the time, but reconstructions. Child-centered parenting seems to me to be centered on “what I would have wanted/needed when I was a child” and the Mini-Me result of that isn’t necessarily accurate.

Enter the cultural narrative. Just as Lady Catherine De Bourgh confidently knew that “if I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient” on the piano, we might confidently predict that “if I had ever identified as transgender, I would have been the real thing.” By centering the innate wisdom of the child in our view of the world, we subtly place our wise and all-knowing selves in their place. It feels like other-directed sensitivity and kindness — and it’s very tempting.