A Revelation From Dolly Parton That She And Carl Dean Planned To Have Kids

Dolly Parton is a well-known country singer for a number of reasons, including her distinguished singing career. She’s an active supporter of children’s literacy development, a devoted supporter of the LGBTQ community, and also a stunning actress. She loves children even despite the fact that she’s never had children of her own.

During her long career, the singer and her husband, Carl Dean, have been asked many times why they don’t have children. She has told them that she is a great aunt or that she loves children.

Dolly has shared even more about why she and Carl never had children.

In an interview with Billboard, she once explained this issue, saying, “Early on, when my husband and I were dating, and then when we got married, we just assumed we would have kids. We weren’t doing anything to stop it. In fact, we thought maybe we would. We even had names if we did, but it didn’t turn out that way.”

Dolly Parton and Carl Dean were married on May 30, 1966. But there are a few reasons why it wasn’t meant to be for the two to become parents…

Dolly once shared, “I met him the first day I got to Nashville, in 1964. I graduated on a Friday night, went to Nashville on a Saturday morning with dirty clothes and I went to a Laundromat looking for anything but love. I had just left two boyfriends back home.”

Talking to Entertainment Tonight, Carl said that he knew right from the start that Dolly Parton was for him, he said, “My first thought was ‘I’m gonna marry that girl. My second thought was, ‘Lord she’s good lookin.’”

Dolly was also immediately taken with Carl. She even took him to meet her aunt and uncle. However, Carl ended up enlisting in the military soon after they met. The two waited until he returned two years later to get engaged.

At first, Dolly’s label didn’t agree for her to get married. But that didn’t faze her. She said, “I was so in love with Carl I couldn’t see straight.”

Dolly and Carl got married in Georgia. Then the very next day, Dolly went right back to work.

They assumed they’d have kids soon. When their lack of birth control failed, they searched for answers. As it turned out, endometriosis affected Dolly Parton’s fertility. She had a partial hysterectomy in 1984. That was a difficult moment for her.

Since they no longer could conceive their own children, Dolly and Carl shifted their focus to their large family, especially all of Dolly’s nieces and nephews.

You see, Dolly is just one of 11 children. So when it comes to kids running around and visiting them, they will never have problems with that. She once said, “I’ve loved their kids just like they’re my grandkids, and now I’ve got great-grandkids! Now I’m GeeGee, which is great-granny. I often think, it just wasn’t meant for me to have kids so everybody’s kids can be mine.”

Dolly has had plenty of time to think about how parenthood would have affected her life and work. In 2014, she said, “I would have been a great mother, I think. I would probably have given up everything else. Everything would have changed. I probably wouldn’t have been a star.”

In the same interview, she did reveal one of the baby names that they had picked out. She said, “My husband and I, when we first got married, we thought about if we had kids, what would they look like? Would they be tall — because he’s tall? Or would they be little squats like me? If we’d had a girl, she was gonna be called Carla.”

Dolly’s love for kids has helped inspire the “Imagination Library.” The foundation sends free books to toddlers and preschoolers and also finances reading programs.