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Comment by gonehome | Hacker News Reader

There’s not much to this article beyond the headline and even that I basically disagree with.

Adulthood grants you freedom and autonomy over your life. Childhood is highly variable and you often have very little control.

I went to a decent public school in the US, a lot of the teachers I had were dumb if not cruel. It was like spending a lot of time doing busy work in a prison run by the least successful adults of the previous generation.

Great teachers made a difference and were outliers, but were rare. I’ll take being an adult and having control over my life a thousand times over being a child that has to wait until they can be free.

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The best thing about childhood to me was probably being worry-free. After you've done your homework or passed a test in school, there was absolutely nothing more to worry about your mind was 100% free to play and explore. Such state is practically inobtainable for people with complex office jobs such as software engineering, and even in mindless menial jobs you can be gnawed by existential doubts ("Am I wasting my life here?") which didn't torment us in childhood.

Working adult life feels worry-free compared to school. There was always more homework or studying to do after a full day in the classroom.

One of the privileges of adult life is leaving work at the office. (I know not every adult does this but every adult has the option.)

Caveats:

* If you can afford it

* If you don't have to take care of dependents or parents

* If your boss isn't an asshole and allows it

* If you have the time remaining to actually do anything

There's many kinds of work that are required of adults, and the consistent low key worry of ending up on the street or starving.

Yeah, but you have agency and the ability to improve these things as an adult - often you don’t as a kid.

It’s still unfairly skewed of course by the initial starting point and highly dependent on IQ (or if you don’t like IQ however you consider varied innate ability).

Still, all things equal having the agency is better than not.

School always ended in the early afternoon, after which you had enough time to finish homework, and you could start playing/tinkering/relaxing before parents returned from work.

Highly variable depending on childhood (parents, location, opportunities).

There’s also just way more uncertainty about the future and future success etc.

I find working adult life way less stressful and a large part of that is the autonomy and independence I have over it.

Your childhood sounds nice.

All the money in the world couldn't convince me to go back to trying to take care of so many adults with such a limited set of resources as I experienced in my childhood.

To me, agency is everything. If you don't have the resources to enforce your boundaries, they don't exist, so childhood is entirely luck of the draw.

As an adult, I get to say, "No," to things and have that matter. Things may not go exactly as I'd like them to, but I have options, and that makes adulthood infinitely better than childhood ever was.

I believe it's not unobtainable but just very hard because of our 'work ethics'.

A weekend is barely enough to calm your mind down, 5 weeks holidays a year by far not enough to actually relax. Some people save a year or more to waste 12 hours going somewhere and trying to enjoy one week of pseudo luxury so they can say themselves they are so relaxed and far from work now.

I do code for a living, but maybe 20/52 weeks a year (plus a hour per week of support). I spend weeks doing mindless stuff without wasting a thought on work. And it's the most free I've felt ever since being a sentiment human. Not only can I play whenever I want, I can afford to play what I want to, my child me would be proud I guess.

What I am actually trying to say is do whatever you can. Get a 4 day week, try get a free afternoon once a week at least. Time really is the most valuable thing. And if you are a creative spirit you will be surprised how much more productive your free time can get once you have time.

I am actually living like that as well (I've worked maybe 10-12 of the past 20 years). Still, even when I'm between contracts, the rat race and hamster-on-a-wheel syndrome prevents me from fully relaxing. I will always worry about getting next job/contract, worry about investments etc. I'm thinking that the only way to at least partially quiet down that anxiety is to get a lot of money (at least 100% more than I realistically need) and retire on it.

I feel you. Contract work is just as stressful if not more sometimes.

The majority of my income comes from different smaller projects, I can afford one dying. The other thing that gives me peace is being me is actually relatively cheap. My house is cheap, I don't own a car, I enjoy nature more than clubbing these days, monetary bad months don't leave a huge dent.

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