the world seems to actively hate the idea of kids having something that remotely looks like choice.

Replace that with "power seems to actively hate the idea of anyone having anything that remotely looks like choice". Mostly because everything is determined. And they know this. They understand that nothing is up to chance. We're perfect little bots who respond deterministically (albeit chaotically) to sex, advertisement, gambling, propaganda, drugs, and so on. Basically all aspects of modern life are designed to chip away at your degrees of freedom. Consider a mortgage, for instance. It locks you into a job so that you can't afford to quit anymore, or you end up destitute. Then consider marriage: it exists so that you buy a house and so that you have children in it. Every choice we think we're making clicks like a ratchet and locks us into a lower energy state that's easy to control.

Or... and I'm prepared to receive flak for this. But consider transitioning in the US specifically. On one side you have Dems coddling you, and on the other side you have Republicans threatening to murder you. So once you transition you're a Dem voter for life even if you don't agree on their other policies. Both parties are playing the same game behind your back.

40 now. Growing up had the adults bemoaning that we all wanted to sit inside and watch TV and play video games all day.

Of course bunch of kids at a park got police called on them, stores installed high pitch noise machines that was irritating (this was the time when kids were putting high pitch tones on their cell phones that teachers couldn't hear as well), and every other practice to make sure that it was understood they really didn't want us anywhere.

the world seems to actively hate the idea of kids having something that remotely looks like choice.

Yeah, to these losers anything can be deemed dangerous and in need of government meddling if it interferes at all with the child-to-student-to-taxpaying-employee pipeline.