Big Law or at a Big 4 accounting firm until your kids are teenagers MIGHT be the right thing, depending on a lot of circumstances. But if you use the logic "I'm 27, I'm planning for the future, so working 80 hours a week right now is normal, appropriate and to be expected," and fail to critically assess whether or not that's the right thing for you and your family, that's a bad thing. And the list of anecdotes of people for whom that thought process led to an outright tragedy is at least as long as the list of success stories.

I would be willing and even excited to have a job where I worked and traveled a bunch. But I know my wife and I know my kids. Doing that would not have been conducive to a good family environment. Not coming home in the evenings and helping with the day-to-day grunt work of raising kids, especially when they're small, didn't work for my family (I tried it and experienced the strain).

I think it's great that it worked well for HarlemCoug. I think it's dangerous to assume that it will work for most people, especially given the number of people I've seen use their career as a club to justify neglect of a family that was crying out for them to be more present. Guys (overwhelmingly) in and out of the church, and usually by their own admission.