We're not talking about sexuality here, right?

I respect your impulse to stop the 25-year-old drunk rock-climber too, and I might too.

But then which model better explains your moral intuitions? Is it the flag-waving "Youth are oppressed! To the barricades for self-determination!" Or is it the pragmatic business of making tough decisions in complicated cases with lots of gray areas.

Yeah, maybe we should let some 14-year-olds live away from home and get jobs. But their having some fundamental right to self-determination doesn't really explain much. It's about whether that particular 14-year-old can handle it, whether rare cases justify a complicated bureaucracy, whether the system will be abused, etc. If the 14-year-old wants to kill himself, many of us would want to intervene, judging that THAT'S not a form of self-determination we support.

YR posits oppressors who provide reasonable justifications for their actions based on the child's own interest, and who have no awareness of intending to oppress, and get no clear benefit. It just doesn't sound like oppression.

We can have passionate fights about things like whether schooling should be overhauled. But it's not about the youth having Rights in contrast to oppressing adults -- it's about what's best for youth in the long run.