Totally agree you can get pigeonholed, but my read of the OP is that they want a job that can support their family first, and that development was one of the th

Totally agree you can get pigeonholed, but my read of the OP is that they want a job that can support their family first, and that development was one of the things they were considering, not that development was a goal in and of itself. My thought is that QA is a solid career, and that once they are established, and get a support structure for their family, if they want to become a dev they can work towards that from a position of strength, rather than a position of near-crisis.