Why are photographs of 19th century children so darn creepy?

In reviewing Nancy Martha Wests text on marketing and the Kodak company I have found the brief analysis of photography from the child's point of view slightly comic, and relevant to agency. West points out that a child's only experience with a camera, prior to 1900, was a highly controlled and arranged scene. In referencing Gisele Freund, Society and Photography, we are provided with the vision that I have sketched. Children are placed in the studio, and captured by their play, rather than capturing their play, or a photography, as the Brownie allows.

To elaborate, within studio photography children are placed in an atmospheres that has references to their interests and particularities. But, they are not placed in the space to play, to exert their own agency, but to be played with like dolls, dressed up and posed. In this manner the scene becomes their reality turned upside down by adult controls, where they no longer rule their imagination in play, but the props do. The Brownie switched this relationship back, giving agency (of some limited degree) back to the child.