QUESTION:  I really want to start a family and not have “child care” rear my children.  A lot of women I know are working professionals, and I've always thought that they love their careers and wouldn't want to put them on pause to start families.  Because of this, my guy friends and I never ask them out.  There's just no appropriate way to ask someone before getting involved with her what her thoughts on this subject are. One female friend recently told me that, contrary to my thinking, many professional single women would love to trade in their careers for a family.  Is this true?

HE SAID:  I, too, would like to marry a woman who wants to (jointly) raise our children at home and not send them to child care.  I used to think of “working professionals” as having the priority of “work first, family second.”  As a result, there were times that I did not pursue a person based upon that notion.

What I now realize is that I missed out on getting to know a lot of godly professional women who do want to take an active parenting role as mothers someday, as well as those who want to stay in the work force.  The women who want to be “stay-at-home moms” have just chosen to pursue a career over waiting at their parent’s home for “Mr. Right” to show up.

For me, my choices were an attempt to not put myself (or someone else) in a position to be hurt or disappointed emotionally.  I took the “safe” route when it came to meeting new people whom I didn’t “perceive” to have the same desires as myself. 

I acted as if I had a “gift of observation,” the ability to look at someone and know who they were, what they liked, what they thought, and what they had planned.  However, the “gift” was probably just a blend of pride, a lack of confidence, some ignorance and a little naivety.  Who was I to think that I could know what a woman thought? 

Many of my single female friends, who are working professionals, have confided in me that they would like to have children someday and raise them at home.  And they don’t understand why guys won’t ask them out.  (I addressed some related issues in a previous article, “What Men Really Think about Successful, Independent Women.")