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I come from a very patriarchal culture, arguably not truly feminist (though it's made its impact on the educated). No one would put their 12 year old daughter on a bus alone to go find work.
Yeah, in some areas of the world even more divorced from reality this can trigger a child endangerment investigation. Gotta be supervised at all times, ideally with a face covering.
Again, you had "left to join the circus" only 4-5 generations ago (for example, the youngest worker on the Hindenburg when it went down was 14- not an unusual thing, and then you look at the workplace photos and see more people even younger than that).
They are capable, we just pretend they aren't because... reasons.
Capable of running away, or capable of getting better outcomes than if they'd followed the guidance of their parents? I'm aware that children were a lot more free-range before, but that did come with expectations that they'd act as they were taught and heeded their elders. In fact, there was far more emphasis on heeding one's elders than there is now, even though, as you note, not all adults are smarter than all teenagers.
You seem to be missing that "if you stay on the farm you'll be poor forever, and you're still not inheriting shit because you weren't born first, so it's time to leave and earn some money to support yourself" was a calculus young men and women commonly had to make even into the middle of the 20th century (in more rural areas).
Modern overextended "adolescence" is a [late-mid]-20th century invention.
Wasn't anything to inherit in most cases. Outside of the US most were tenant farmers: all my distant ancestors certainly were.
My grandfather and his father on the male side were both apprenticed at 12 and moved into their masters' shops. On my mother's side her father started working in the mines around the same age, which was much later than her grandfather had started work (around 9ish)
My dad got to go to trade school until 15, and didn't start a real industrial job (bit grinding) until then.
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