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I'm going to be honest here. I think it depends.

For me I went back to school about 3 years after I started working. I did it mostly because I was bored. All I had was work and then I went home and I sat around watching tv and basically doing nothing. My worked offered a master degree program and so I took it. It would take 3 years to complete.

For me it was pretty easy for the first year. After being out of school for 3 years it was not that hard to get back to studying and learning and it was very engaging. Problem for me was the my personal life started to pick up. I found DH and our relationship was going well and I sort of wanted to spend all my time with him and then we got engaged and married during my last year of school. I actually took a quarter off for the wedding and we waited half a year to go on our honeymoon so I could finish up my master's degree.

That last year was HARD! I still had good grades because it's hard to get bad grades in grad school well at least my grad school. It was just hard to get all the assignments done and study for tests and have time for work, my relationship and planning a wedding.

I really can't imagine throwing kids in that mix. I would be hard pressed to go for more education right now.

That being said a lot of my older coworkers also went back to school some of them had young kids and some had elementary school kids and some had middle school and high school kids. It was definitely interesting to see how they balanced but mostly the other spouse had to take on a lot more work for them to go back to school. It worked out for almost all of them.

Sadly one couple actually got divorce over one of my co-workers going back to school but I think it was his fault because 1 master's degree was not enough he wanted to go for his MBA too and I think his wife had enough because she already did so much for the family while he went for his master's degree and thought that things would go back to normal but when he wanted to do his MBA it felt never ending.

Sorry if this is a bit of a downer reply but I thought you should hear this experience. Also your experience might be totally different.

I went back 5 years later. As others have said, it might depend on what you are studying. I think the hardest thing for me was adjusting to writing papers again. In the beginning, I would just stare at Word and sit there waiting to figure out where to start. It was pretty difficult but after the first semester, the rest of grad school was comparatively easy.

The other difficult part for me in the beginning was the fact that many of my classmates were much younger than I was and came to the Master's program direct from undergrad. I struggled to connect with them since we were going through very different things and had very different experiences.

BTW, I'm thinking about TTC while in school! I must really be crazy!

I started my phd program 4 years after undergrad, and the first semester was HARD but it got much better after that! I wasn't totally out of academia while I worked-- I was a researcher--but it was in a different field so it was definitely an adjustment. Also, I thought I was going to be able to study 9-5 and have weekends and evenings free since I was disciplined from working that schedule, but that was a big fat fail! Grad school soaks up all the time you give it In my experience

I started grad school last year, about 13 years after undergrad. It's been way harder than I ever thought. I'm doing an online program, which is nice because I don't have to go anywhere else after work. As far as being rusty, the hardest thing to get used to was all the new online research methods that are available now. When I was in undergrad in the late 90's, you pretty much had to go to the library and check out a book. But the worst thing by far is the amount of work that is required. It could just be my program, but I can't handle more than one class at a time on top of my full-time job. Just taking one class is like having another full-time job some weeks. I've put way more effort into this than anything I did in undergrad. We don't have kids yet, but there's no way that I would be in school and try to raise a family. I'm completely tapped out as it is. We're planning on TTC around grad school, so that I'll be done by the time a baby comes along. My biggest advice since you already have a family is to thoroughly research the program before you apply and really understand how much time will be required.

@SugarplumsMom: We are also TTC! IF I get in...and IF I get pregnant....I'll probably take off the semester after the LO is born. All big IFs, lol!

One last comment...I have a friend with four kids who went back to get a second bachelor's...this time in nursing. She was an SAHM before that and they lived off of her husband's salary. Her youngest was a toddler. She got her associate's, then worked for two years, then did the credits to get her BS (this while working a full-time job). Now she is the primary earner in the family and her husband homeschools their children. I always think of her when I am waffling about how much I can take on at once.