I do not recognize your parents experience in the EU, but yes, here employees are very protected while contractors are not. Still, outside the certainly of employment, even in the EU, I know only positives when contracting. Things like tax and insurance optimizing you cannot really do as employee and now with WFH, it is possible to optimize even more. And if you have a trackrecord, it is easy to get other projects. Note: I am getting close to 50y/old.

Edit; another thing which you can do as contractor and typically not as employee, is take retainers. When a project is done and the company does not need me anymore, they can retain me for n hours per months that I will spend on that project no matter what else I am doing; and they pay no matter if they use the hours or not. Similar is, and I have done that too, an SLA on the project you helped deliver. But that is far more dangerous as others might have continued working on it, so I don't do that anymore.

Yes, in EUrope its much harder to fire employ than contractor. In some countries you need stuff like 3 written warnings and so on