Sheer Proximity or The Purpose Of An Early Retirement

I've more often than not had a serious amount of second guesses (not the same as regret, btw) on my partially voluntary decision to retire early around age 50.  When I read about early retirement in the media and in misc blogs the sense I get, and the way it is framed verbally, is that it is all about financial independence.  An early retirement blogger that I like to read a lot, financialsamurai.com, puts it this way (indirectly because here he is talking about prestige -- but his point, I think (or am I projecting), is that prestige is a block when it comes to early retirement and that financial independence is a "good"):  

"The desire for prestige is why we: 1) spend an outrageous sum of money on education, 2) kill ourselves at jobs we don’t like, 3) put up with colleagues and bosses we despise, 4) never pursue our dreams, and 5) eventually fill our hearts with regret."  link here 

The supposed "purpose" of early retirement, financial independence, is not enough, or not for me.  It has its costs, too. What pushes ER over the top when it comes to cost/benefit is purpose.  Me? My purpose was always having a sufficiently deep presence -- and by presence I mean nothing more than just "being around" --  in the lives of my daughters at those particular stages in their lives where it really matters.  That is what gets me through the social deserts and isolation, the forgone income, the slackening of intellectual rigor, the increased risk of long term retirement failure, etc…

How nice then that the NYT just confirmed me in my various self-delusions.  In an article called "What Do Teenagers Want? Potted Plant Parents" they laid it all out.  Here are some excerpts:  

• A new study from Australia confirms the importance of a parent’s physical presence on adolescent health. Researchers from the University of Western Australia studied 3,000 middle- and high school students, including 618 adolescents with one parent who lived away from home for long stretches because of work, like a job on an offshore oil rig or a distant construction site. The researchers wanted to know how the extended absences of these “fly-in, fly-out” parents might affect the emotional and behavioral health of their children.

• Overall, most adolescents felt their parents were present in their lives regardless of their work hours. However, a slightly higher percentage of teenagers who experienced the long work absence of a parent had emotional or behavioral problems compared with those whose parents worked more traditional hours.

• This echoes research finding high rates of emotional distress in teenagers who routinely returned to an empty house after school or whose parents were rarely at dinner.
• And findings also suggest that parents don’t have to be home all the time to be present in their children’s lives, but it helped to be home at certain times. A classic study connected the total time at least one parent was home before and after school, at dinner and at bedtime to improved psychological health in adolescents. Importantly, the studies of parental presence indicate that sheer proximity confers a benefit over and above feelings of closeness or connectedness between parent and child. [emphasis added] 

 And last but not least….

•  In other words, it’s great if you and your adolescent get along well with each other, but even if you don’t, your uneasy presence is better for your teenager than your physical absence. [emphasis added]

quod erat demonstrandum