My family may not be the model of what you had in mind because my brother and I are old enough to be out of the house but still feel pretty close to our parents.
My dad lost his job over a year ago. I can’t see an upside to it.
He’s always put a lot of his identity into being a hard worker so it’s been extremely hard on him not to find something equal to what he had right away. He’s taken odd jobs, helped our extended family out, had a couple of contract gigs, so he’s busy but mostly he’s just driven himself crazy trying to figure out what he did wrong. As far as I can tell, he didn’t do anything wrong, he just made too much because of extensive experience and now expects the same. At the same time the type of work he did is in less demand because the products are in less demand.
The affect on my family has been that he’s lost his confidence. It’s been a far reaching change that’s slowly happened over the time he’s been unemployed. He constantly brings up applying to bag groceries or being a greeter at WalMart. Nothing wrong with those jobs, but they’re quite a bit different than what he’s capable of. He worries about retirement constantly, he tries to figure out something he can do for extra cash but always comes back to thinking he’ll fail. He’s just not the same guy and it hurts to watch. He’s amazing and simply doesn’t recognize it anymore because he’s always attached so much of his confidence to always being able to “get the job done”.
The worst part is he and mom are having real problems for the first time I can remember. They’ve been married 30+ years and it’s not like they’ve never fought or it was always perfect, but I’ve never seen it where it is now. They’re OK financially but he sees everything in terms of where savings and earnings were at their peak.
If my mom had lost her job instead, maybe that could be a positive, but honestly I feel taking away options from anyone will never result in them feeling better about their situation.
If someone’s life would be better if they leave work, they should leave work, but circumstances forcing them into that are hard to see as a positive in any situation.