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.
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.
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.
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.)
* 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.
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.
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.