Dolly's blog: Easter Musings

Ahh, Easter. High point: a day spent screaming like an adolescent at Dreamland in Margate (anyone else remember the Enterprise ride from the 1980s?!). Low point: making my son cry when I accidentally ate his Easter egg.

In between I've been contemplating risk, partly after listening to my brother being interviewed recently about the solo Channel swim he did in 1988 aged 11. "Weren't your parents worried?! Do you think that could happen today?" were two lines of questioning, the subtext being "what were they thinking" and "no". And in fact it couldn't happen now if only because the rules changed so that you have to be at least 16. But I don't think that's progress.

A classic first child and normally about as radical as Neil Kellerman in Dirty Dancing proposing to end the season with the Pachenga, I don't consider myself one of life's great risk takers. I also used to do a lot of child protection law. So when my 9 year old and her friend wanted to walk around town by themselves for half an hour this holiday I had to take a deep breath, remember what my brother accomplished and resist the cheat's option of secretly following them.

And yet despite these risk aversion tendencies, my braver decisions have proved without exception to be the best ones: switching practice areas, a mid-career solo backpacking beano, buying a house in a rough area now overrun with quinoa munching hipsters, a recent major job change, marrying a soldier. (Actually scrap that last one - I'm just boarding an anniversary mini break flight to France by myself because he's got to work.) Biggest regret? Chickening out of attempting a Channel solo myself.

In the workplace, friends and colleagues who have most thrived have often been the risk takers; the ones who carved out new specialisms in areas they didn't know much about to start with, but made their own.

I wonder how all that squares with a modern approach to parenting (over-parenting?) that often feels so incredibly risk averse. At the risk of sounding like a Daily Mail reader (with apologies to any Daily Mail readers) health and safety seem to trump all other considerations and I wonder if that and the focus on child self esteem has the unintended consequence of corroding resilience by shielding them too much from potential failure (or hypothermia).

I don't always pull it off but I hope that in both my parenting and career choices I channel Johnny Castle and work on a cross between Cuban rhythm and street dancing. Maybe not at the partners' conference though.

After 19 years of fee earning, Dolly now works in a management role in a London law firm.  Working four days a week she has three children aged 5 to 9, a wonderful (though often absent) husband and a charismatic dog who keeps her sane.