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If you watch the CBS comedy Everybody Loves Raymond and know even a smidgen about Patricia Heaton, who plays Raymond's affable wife, Debra, it's easy to assume that Heaton is a lot like the TV character. They're both happily married, have a bunch of young kids to manage, and are approaching middle age. But there's a huge difference often overlooked: Heaton, who recently had her fourth baby in 5 1/2 years, works a full-time job outside the home. She chatted with us just after she'd wrapped Raymond for the season. Lorrie Lynch says it was like catching up with an old friend, "Though we'd never met. Heaton, in whose accent I can hear traces of her Ohio upbringing, is funny, warm and forthcoming." Here are excerpts from their conversation:

LL: You have Sam, 5, John, 4, Joe, 2, and Daniel, 2 months, what do you think? Are you going to try for a girl?
PH: I don't think so...

LL: You'd probably get a fifth boy.
PH: Right. But I think boys ultimately are easier than girls. Even now. I have friends with little girls. Girls can be manipulative. They get cliquey and mean to each other. I know from what a brat I was. And it's distressing that so early on they get into clothes and looks and weight. Boys wear their hearts on their sleeves. Even when they're trying to pull one over on you they're so transparent. Like men.

LL: You say you were a brat. Why do you say that?
PH: I just know I was! I can remember incidents where I was so mean to people. I think back to them specifically, and I think how awful girls can be to each other.

LL: Did you always know you wanted to have this many kids?
PH: Well, I assumed that I'd have some because that's what you do in life, but I never had a burning desire for them. Now, perhaps had I found that I couldn't get pregnant, then the desire would have really grown. Before we had the kids, my husband and I were traveling a lot and working and really enjoying our lives and each other. We both love the theater and books and travel and so we were really having a lot of fun. I could've continued to do that. But of course now that we have kids, we wouldn't trade it for anything.

LL: Handling it all must be exhausting, especially since Daniel is just 2 months and you went right back to work after his birth.
PH: I'm now just coming up for air.

LL: You're not going to be ready to go back to work in August.
PH: I'm ready to go back now! No, really it's going to come way too soon, I can tell. When you have four, there's a lot you want to do with each one. I find myself every day not getting all the stuff done I want to get done because I'm trying to attend to the needs of each one. At this age, they're all pretty dependent on you. I have to delegate some to the nanny. I'd like to be the one spending all the time but it's pretty nigh impossible. Y'know, someone actually said to me when I was pregnant with Daniel, 'Oh, I think 4 is way beyond. How can you devote attention to more than two or three, at the most?' And I said, 'Well, I'm the fourth of five,' and I thought, 'and I'm happily married and you're going through a divorce, so there!'

LL: So when and how did it all change around so much that only two children is appropriate?
PH: As if being able to give them all this material stuff is going to make them better people. Well that kid in Littleton was driving a BMW. I don't remember my mother ever playing with me. And she was a perfectly good mother. But she had to do the laundry and clean the house and do the grocery shopping.

LL: So why do you think the husbands on TV are always bumbling and the wives cooler? Why are the men presented that way?
PH: Because - it's TRUE? (laughs) Though one of the things we're trying to show (on the show) more is Debra's own failings and vulnerability. Things like the fact that she's not a good cook. We did an episode where she goes out to get a job and she gets fired because she's not good. They hire a babysitter to help out and she finds out she hates the fact that the kids have more fun with the sitter than her. She and Ray go away together and she freaks out because she thinks Ray thinks she's a boring housewife. So, (the writers) aren't completely patronizing toward the adolescent husband. Though mostly he's a sort of bumbling idiot.

LL: But why?
PH: Most of these (sitcoms) show men at home. Men are very competent in their workplace -- and this is going to sound sexist - women are better at running households and juggling lots of things, kids and scheduling and that kind of thing. Home life is a foreign environment for most guys. So it's natural to show them being idiots at home.

LL: How does it feel to have such a high profile and regular job.
PH: You have to try to keep prudent and stock some cash away. But it's hard, for so many years I literally had nothing. I was always somebody's roommate. Most of my friends from college became dental hygienists or went into retail, a lot went into sales. They all started getting married and having kids and buying homes and I was still living like a college student. After 15 or 20 years of that, when you finally get some money, you have a lot of catching up to do, materially. I have a dear friend who owns a company that summarizes depositions. I used to do it. I always say to them, "I just want you guys to know, I may be coming back to you." I do have moments where I say, 'Oh, this will be okay, I don't have to worry about going back to that kind of work." But then I think, you never know...

LL: Well, certainly you've learned you will be able to survive.
PH: I used to look at infomercials and say, "That's lame. I would never ever do one of those." Then I had four kids and I go, "Well if i had to do an infomercial, I would do an infomercial." Whatever it takes to, keep these guys fed, and clothed.

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