Why didn't they just script a son instead of a boyish little girl?

In which case why would they need to script a boy if the child's sex was irrelevant?

"Has anyone seen my wife?" - Columbo

...the child's sex is almost irrelevant to the plot.
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The child's sex is "relevant" to the plot, in that the Gallagher's had a daughter not a son. When Alex kidnaps her for part of the day, it seems more believable that Ellen "being a girl", would have connected more easily with this "stranger" female. Ellen is referred to as female in the beginning and I don't recall at any stage, questioning why she should be a boy. There is a scene where she dresses up a a pilgrim boy for a school play; but that was just cute and she got away with it.....so good for her. Plus, she looked like she could have been the real child of Douglas and Archer's characters and would have screen tested better, over the other child contenders.

By the way, do you have an "issue" with little girls that can look boyish and is that your real reason for posting?

i honestly had a hard time guessing if it was a boy or girl, when i first watched





i've got feelings too, ya know - inbetweeners

OP, presumably the script called for a girl but they picked an actress with a haircut that made her look like a boy. If they'd changed the character to a boy it would have been even more weird having a girl playing a boy.

I also thought she was a boy at first, when they first refer to her as a she I thought "They have another child?"

It is odd that a 1980s Hollywood movie would have a little girl that looks so much like a boy who is only an ancillary character and her appearance is never even mentioned. In this year's Room, the long haired boy does look like a girl and even though he's in a traumatic situation where this is the least of his worries, his grandma (Joan Allen) still says he should get his hair cut and eventually he does.

You are weird person. LOL. If child's sex is irrelevant as you say why did they need to script a boy? What a logic. Writer of the final script probably planned that from the get-go. In original story it was a girl/daughter for some reason. May be script has gender-neutral child character and they cast this girl based on her acting abilities. She had better chemistry with Douglas and Archer, so they picked her.
And why is girl boyish? WTF? She's adressed early on as a silly girl. She just had haircut that many kids had in late 80s. And she wore clothes that many kids wore in late 80s. 80s was less gendered society for kids. Girls didn't wear pink dresses and boy didn't wear blue all the time. Heavy gendering for kids became a thing in mid 90s to early 2000s.