When adults are cast in child roles, the future of child cinema?

[Rich_Visiting]

Decided to have a look around at some of the old websites that are still active to see the current trends with child movies. It's unbelievable, on a website for child films (international film festival releases non-US) I would say that at least 50% have adults cast as children. That is, in the forward to the film they say something like "young girl" but the girl is clearly like 18 years old. This was generally a US trend, I think, to avoid confusing the male audience with a child cast who exhibits some form of identity. It's easier to think, oh she's just a child rather than consider someone with similar emotions to an adult.

The others that say "little girl" really mean it and they are like around 7 years old (or younger). Here, they are depicted as "cheeky" and "cute" and are girls are generally chosen that have typical non-emotive child-like features, curly hair, glasses, ginger. The outfits are usually boy-like in nature.

The outfits and depiction of girls is really important to understand, consider Hermione Granger in Harry Potter for an example. See how they gave her baggy clothing and made her hair kind of outward and geekyish in the first few movies, then as she gets older the hair becomes slicker and the clothing becomes tighter (or lower cut). I find this really interesting (if annoying). Why was this done? Clearing it's not representative of children in real life that age, but seems a common trend throughout US movies.

Casting 8 to 13 year olds has always been difficult especially in more serious films with meaningful content, it seems that age range is now restricted to some circus act with no plot and "sassy" girls with attitude (of course entirely politically correct; multi-ethnic and overwhelmingly more of the girls are stronger than boys type empowerment storyline). I didn't come back to complain lol but I thought this may be an interesting talking point.

The worrisome aspect is that, what would be considered 2nd World countries, now seem to have adopted US style ideologies and children simply aren't portrayed in a realistic light. It seems the film producers today are airing on the side of caution and just casting stereotypical roles for children that will appeal to both adults and children. Then, the intent of the story is not to identify and enjoy the character of the film but a lesson political correctness.

I probably missed some good movies in my absence that probably go against the above, or is my initial feeling on this correct? Anyone else notice this?