For me, I got married straight out of college. But, I didn't have any student loans to pay off, so that makes quite a bit of difference, I think. We waited until we bought our house to start trying to have a family. Fate played a different set of cards though, and I ended up still working for 7 more years. Just this past summer we got pregnant, and are only now starting a family. So I had a career first, but that's the way it worked out, not the way we had originally planned.