I guess its what suits the individual. The caveat to my post about 'not caring about status' is of course, dependent on where you work. some airlines treat their FO's with a lot more respect and trust than others!
And as macdo said about personal enlightenment, how I see myself and my status is far more important than how others see it. If I cared about how others viewed my status I would have become a banker and pasted a 20ft high copy of my bonus cheque on the front of the house, and got me a trophy blonde wife and a porsche!
Having had a previous career and having been in this industry for a while and seen the results of various career decisions that different people made, Personally I would prefer the right hand seat in a stable, career airline, with good t's and c's etc rather than bouncing from left hand seat to left hand seat in a succsession of dodgy here-one-minute-gone-the-next operators.
Some people obviously are in the right place at the right time and get direct entry commands to expanding airlines that turn out to be good bets. But then others jump from decent career airlines to take a command in a smaller less stable operator and then it all goes pete tong. And then what? a succession of short jobs, or back on the bottom of the list at a big airline?
Picking up on macdo's point, my wife is a divorce lawyer, and i'm pretty sure she's never had a client citing 'spouses job status' as grounds for divorce!
'spouse is never home','spouse never has time for me', 'spouse never sees the kids' however are right up there at the top of the list..