Certainly if you're going to enter into this sort of venture when you're married with a young family, it's a decision you need to make as a family rather than m

Certainly if you're going to enter into this sort of venture when you're married with a young family, it's a decision you need to make as a family rather than make yourself and try to impose on them. Other than the capacity for risk and relative poverty elements, two other things I'd throw out there as factors are: 1) Exhaustion: I've two young children and the first few years of their lives I was exhausted most of the time and I know that I wasn't at my best professionally (lack of sleep makes you stupid and forgetful). It really isn't the best state to be risking everything on your own abilities. 2) Balancing work and life: If you're going to have kids you probably want (that's genuinely want rather than feel obliged) to spend time with them. It's different to a lot of other things you might want to do with your time in that there are things you can't say "I'll do later in life". They grow up incredibly quickly in those early years and it's not something you get a second shot at experiencing - you can't go back and see your infant child five years down the line when your business is settled. And that's before the practicalities of child care and everything else that goes with it...