Currently in year 3 of retirement. Pulled the plug at 33 with 3 kids. My wife is still working 3-4 days/wk and switched to working from home all but 1-2 days/month.
Right choice? Yes, without a doubt.
I can always make more money later if necessary or desired. I never made huge money while working, so it won't be too hard to make decent money if I ever do anything productive in the future.
In fact, I'm slowly backsliding into doing a small amount of work. I get offered jobs and freelance work routinely and turn down almost all of it. Last month I started a consulting practice with the goal to work 1-2 hours per week. It being too successful, I just raised my rates to kill some of the demand so I can get back to 1-2 hours/wk on average.
As for kids, our oldest is 10 and we have seen exactly zero high expense years to date. I expect high school will be an expensive time for a few years and we have 529's to cover part of college (plus my kids score well on standardized tests so they'll probably get some decent merit based scholarships). I've found it incredibly easy to make five figures with minimal effort and not even in my old field, so if I need to turn on the income generation engines for a couple years to supplement, so be it.
When I'm out and about, I usually play the stay at home dad card (which is 100% true too!
and might mention my side hustle as if it were a real job. Vagueness helps deflect any deeper questions from casual acquaintances.
"Oh so you stay home with the kids?" Yes.