The sky over the city had that soft, thoughtful grey blanket today. Perfect afternoon for quiet walk home, the air cool and calm.
My daughter was buzzing with energy sharing about a magnificent castle she built during playtime.
And as I listened, half-distracted by scrolling headlines on my phone, that term caught my eye: job hugging. People clinging to careers, not passion, but fear. And wow, did it hit me hard?
What Is the Great Stay? And Is It Accidentally Teaching Kids Job Hugging?
Let’s be real—that news hits home. HARD! This idea of a ‘Great Stay,’ where millions of us are choosing the devil we know over the uncertainty of a new path, is completely understandable.
When you have little people depending on you, ‘stability’ isn’t just a word; it’s a warm bed, a full fridge, and the peace of mind to know that everything is going to be okay. It’s the foundation of the life we’re trying to build.
I feel it every single day. It’s the quiet hum under the surface of every decision.
And when we hear that nearly half of workers feel this way, with a whopping 95% pointing to market uncertainty, it’s not a statistic—it’s a shared sigh of relief that we’re not alone in this feeling.
But here’s the thought that’s been racing through my mind ever since. There’s a difference between a foundation and a fortress.
A foundation is something you build on. A fortress is something you hide in.
And when we ‘hug’ our jobs purely out of fear, we risk turning our source of security into a cage. It can drain our energy, our spark, our joy.
And our kids? They are the most sensitive emotional barometers on the planet.
They don’t necessarily understand balance sheets or labor market trends, but they feel our energy. They feel it when we come home energized and present versus when we come home carrying the weight of a place we’d rather not be.
They absorb that ambient anxiety, and it can subtly shape their own view of the world: that work is a chore, that risk is terrifying, and that security means playing it safe, always.
How to Build a Joy Launchpad for Kids Future Resilience?
This is where we get to do something AMAZING. We can flip the script!
What if we started thinking about our jobs not as the final destination, but as our family’s adventure launchpad?
YES! Think about it like planning a big trip.
Your home is the essential base. It’s where you pack your bags, rest, and feel safe.
But the point of the home isn’t to stay in it forever—it’s to be the place you launch your incredible journeys from!
Our careers can be the same. They provide the resources, the structure, the stability that allows our family to go out and EXPLORE the world with confidence.
When we see our work through this lens, everything changes!
The energy shifts from ‘I have to do this’ to ‘Look what this allows us to do!’
It reframes our entire purpose.
Our stability becomes fuel for their curiosity.
Our hard work becomes the ticket to weekend adventures, to museum visits, to having the time and space to just lie on the floor and build that magnificent, wobbly cardboard castle without a world of worry pressing down on us.
We can model that a job is a powerful tool for living a full, vibrant life, not the sum total of it.
We can show them that our professional lives are a part of a much bigger, more joyful story—the story of our family.
And that, my friends, is an electrifying lesson in what a healthy relationship with work and life looks like!
What Future-Proof Skills Develop During Kids Creative Playtime?
So what about the future? We’ve got this. When kids are fully immersed in creating—whether building castles from cardboard or designing imaginary worlds—they’re actually developing the skills that no robot can replace.
They’re cultivating RADICAL CURIOSITY, that unstoppable drive to ask ‘what if?’ and ‘why not?’
They’re practicing BOLD CREATIVITY—learning that there’s more than one way to solve problems.
They’re building RESILIENT FLEXIBILITY as they adapt when structures wobble or plans change.
And they’re developing EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE through negotiating roles and resolving conflicts in their playspaces.
This is the work! This is the most powerful, future-proof résumé of all.
And the absolute best part? You don’t need a guidebook. Those cardboard castles aren’t just playthings. They’re hands-on classrooms for antifragility—where setbacks become setup for bigger discoveries.
Our job isn’t to give them a map for a world that’s constantly changing; it’s to give them a compass of character and the confidence to draw their own maps.
They are becoming antifragile. And when we frame our work as the launchpad for their joyful explorations, something magical happens. We stop job hugging, and start joy sharing.
We can send our kids rocketing into the future, with the thrilling belief that they can build any world they can imagine.
Source: America Has Entered a New Kind of Job Market, Newsweek, 2025-09-14