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That's why I don't find it useful to frame slavery as entirely bad, or always bad. You've got to consider what is lost and what is gained. It is a spectrum as you point out.
My child is as much a slave as anyone who has ever been a slave. Every aspect of her life is dictated by my wife and me. She loses all autonomy in exchange for living to adulthood and gaining valuable skills. This is necessary because she doesn't have the developmental ability to make those decisions for herself.
Then the question becomes, which adults don't have sufficient faculties to act autonomously. Taken further, some authoritarian states seize control of certain liberties from the citizens, ostensibly because as a whole they regard the people incapable of wielding those liberties appropriately.
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