I think I am sympathetic to your point-of-view, but I'm not sure, because it seems (to me) that you are maybe conflating a couple of different costs.

Let's start at the numerator - you appear to be calculating life "happiness" (according to some internal metric) vs ... cost. You appear to be calculating costs as being:

  - Not making more money because the degree did not lend it to making more money

  - Social approbation for not making more money 

  - Missed revenue (income) because time spent with family/childcare

  - Social approbation for not taking the higher-ranked (and labeled as such) gig

  - Missed economic opportunity (income) for work-social reasons or work-enjoyment reasons

Is that right? I'm not sure what social approbation (or that of your SO) means to you, but this seems (generally) to be a pretty clear trade-off of doing what you want vs. making more money by doing what society is willing to pay you for?

I mean - I'm a fan of doing what you like - but surely you don't expect society to pay you to watch Jerry Springer and smoke week all day at home munching down on pizza, right? How is this different?

Am I missing something?