Dolly Parton and her husband Carl Dean were married for nearly six decades by the time he died on March 3, 2025.

However, they never had children.

It wasn’t always their plan to remain childfree: In a 2014 interview with Billboard, Parton said that she and Dean originally expected they’d have kids.
“Early on, when my husband and I were dating, and then when we got married, we just assumed we would have kids,” she explained. “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.”

In her 2017 book Dolly on Dolly: Interviews and Encounters with Dolly Parton, the singer said she was 35 “when I first got sick,” explaining she suffered from “stomach problems and female problems” along with a host of other issues. In 1984, she was diagnosed with endometriosis. The following year, at 36 years old, she underwent a partial hysterectomy, according to Variety.
Though Parton has been open about the emotional turmoil caused by her health issues and other family-related factors, she’s also said that she and Dean eventually agreed that not having children was the right decision for them
“I used to think I should regret it,” the star admitted to Billboard.

“… Now I say, ‘God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine,” she continued.

Parton’s massive platform has allowed her to support and enrich children all over the world, including efforts like her Dollywood theme park and her book-gifting program, the Imagination Library.

“Now that Carl and I are older, we often say, ‘Aren’t you glad we didn’t have kids? Now we don’t have kids to worry about,'” Parton explained in 2014.