Dolly's blog: Is 3 the magic number?

I never set out to have 3 children. In fact returning to work after our second I told anyone who would listen that we were stopping at 2. Definitely. End of. Talk to the hand.

Why? Because I loved my job and vividly remember believing with utter certainty that I wouldn't be able to continue doing it if we added another little person to the to do list. Plus only earth mothers had 3+ and lord knows I'm not one of those. Three lots of homework, parents evenings, play dates, world book day costumes and (shudder) birthday parties? Not for me my friend. It was seriously challenging maintaining career momentum with just two rug rats so adding a third clearly wasn't a cunning plan.

Of course life has a funny habit of going off piste. We lost an unplanned third and the sense of having had a child stolen was so visceral that nothing was going to stop me trying again. Fortune smiled and I count my blessings every time I see him.

But was my career prediction correct? I would love to say no but the honest answer is partly. Three mat leaves = three big career breaks during which clients move on, the pipeline of future work is constricted and career momentum takes a bashing, just at precisely the wrong time. And in our post-nanny era of austerity the reality is that this parenting thing takes up quite a lot of time, no matter how much I try to outsource it to a succession of au pairs. Something had to give, other than my sanity.

Apparently women in London have fewer children than anywhere else in country and half of British families now contain only one child, the highest level for 80 years. Doubtless there are all sorts of reasons, but I bet the cost of having children (in every sense) and the challenge of combining that with a career are right up there.

I firmly believe that career doom is not a foregone conclusion. Far from it and goodness knows there are some seriously inspiring working parents out there. But I'm not sure we do the next generation any favours by pretending that parenthood doesn't have any impact whatsoever. Of my law school mates I'm about to become the last to abandon fee earning and in each case that's all about family commitments. That's not necessarily a negative; I'm itching to get stuck in to my new role which will be fun and challenging in equal measure. There's also a fighting chance it's achievable in the part time hours I now work and for me, right now, that's a game changer.

If we'd stuck at one child then life may have turned out quite differently. But I can also say with absolute certainty that je ne regrette rien.

Dolly is an employment lawyer and partner in a London firm.  Currently working four days a week, theoretically between the hours of 9 and 5 in the manner of Dolly Parton (but with less impressive hair and reduced scope for rhinestone).  Full time wife, mother of three lovely children aged three to seven and devoted dog owner.