Dolly Parton didn't have children because "God didn't mean" for her to have kids.
Dolly Parton
The '9 To 5' hitmaker insists that not having kids allowed her to focus fully on her career and she had a lot of "freedom" to give her music her full focus.
She said: "I've made sacrifices but I believe that I know what I'm supposed to do. But you've got to make the sacrifice. Since I had no kids, and my husband was pretty independent, I had freedom. So I think a big part of my whole success is the fact that I was free to work ... I didn't have children because I believe that God didn't mean for me to have kids so everybody's kids could be mine, so I could do things like the [book gifting program] Imagination Library. If I hadn't had the freedom to work I wouldn't have done all the things I've done and I wouldn't be in the position to do all the things I'm doing."
And the 74-year-old singer - who has been married to Carl Thomas Dean since the 1960s - quipped that people even wonder if her husband is "real" because he doesn't like to be in the spotlight.
Speaking to Oprah Winfrey on her Apple TV+ show about her husband's preference to stay out of the spotlight, she added: "A lot of people have thought that through the years, because he does not want to be in the spotlight at all. It's just not who he is. He's like, a quiet, reserved person and he figured if he ever got out there in that, he'd never get a minute's peace and he's right about that."
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