"Until relatively recently, psychologists assumed that children did not start to care about their reputation and peers' perceptions until around age nine."
I mean, these psychologist did grow up and spend time as a child, right?
Only relatively recently did someone pay money to prove that yes, in fact, circumcision hurts. Before that the 'common wisdom' was that babies don't process pain. Said no parent, ever.
There's a lot of patronizing that goes on in organized medicine/psychology, and juvenile medicine seems to get a double helping of it.
I believe they used to perform major surgery on babies using the same non-evidence-based reasoning. I think the real reason is the combination of 1) tortured babies can't file lawsuits but 2) Parents whose babies die from anesthesia can file lawsuits. So, follow the money as with everything in medicine.
A parent could sue doctors for the babies pain though. I suspect doctors then said "babies can't feel pain!" in order to not get sued, that way surgeries gets cheaper.
That kind of thing was practiced in countries where doctors don't fear getting sued. I grew up in the USSR; at the age of 2 or so, they chemically burned some kind of tumor out of me, with no anesthetic. I don't even remember it myself - I just have a large scar on my arm, and my mother's story about how it went. From her words, the doctors' motivation was that they didn't want to risk anesthesia on a kid that young unless absolutely necessary for the operation, which they deemed this wasn't.
Perhaps, but there's a line between distrusting anecdotes and being silly. After all, parachutes do actually prevent deadly stops.
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
I mean, these psychologist did grow up and spend time as a child, right?