Some examples:

  1. _" Children aren't meant to be working in factories; they should be in school!"_. I thought "子供たちが工場なんて所で働くのは子供っぽいじゃない" or ”〜で働くべからず。”

  2. A: _" Today I filled everyone's water bottles in the office!"_; B: _" Uh, you're not really meant to do all that."_. I thought "そういうことじゃ、役割にはないだろう" or some such usage of 役割.

I think the connotation in the above in the usage of 'meant to be' is along
the lines of "You, as a student or an office worker or a child, or whatever,
have this pre-ordained/socially established set of things you ought to be
doing but you are doing things that veer off this course."

Are there more general ways of conveying this in Japanese or is it highly
context dependent?
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phrases
What are some ways of saying '~not meant to be~'?
I don't think there's just one term that could be used for all translations,
as you said, it is highly contextual.

# っぽくない・らしくない

This is used to describe something that you wouldn't expect of the subject.
Your example with child labor, though grammatical, is unnatural. It's like
saying, "Working in a factory is so un-child-like." (By the way, っぽいじゃない is
not the negative of っぽい. It [forms a tag
question](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1481/usage-
of-%ef%bd%9e%e3%81%98%e3%82%83%e3%82%93-%ef%bd%9e%e3%81%98%e3%82%83%e3%81%aa%e3%81%84/1485#1485).)

# べきではない・べからず

This means mustn't/shouldn't. So in your example it is fitting. Although,
please note that [べからず is
literary/archaic](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/18646/).

# 役割ではない・役割にはない

This means "not one's job" or "not in one's duties". Again, this would work
for certain cases.

# 〜ではない

Other possible translations I could think of off the top of my head would be:

  * はずではない: こんなはずではなかった It wasn't supposed/meant to be like this.
  * もの・ことではない: 人間は海の生き物ではない Mankind isn't built for living/meant to live in the sea. (Very loose translation, but works for literary contexts/dramatic effect)
  * 運命ではない: 私たちは結ばれる運命ではないかもね Maybe we weren't destined/meant to be together.
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