Dolly Parton and Carl Dean’s Nearly 60-Year Marriage Didn’t Include Children — Here’s Why

Singer Dolly Parton has been famous for so long that most of her fans think they know everything about her. However, one aspect of the celebrated musician's life she often kept close to her chest was her 60-year marriage to her late husband, Carl Thomas Dean. Before Carl passed away in March 2025 at 82 years old, (via AV Club) he and Dolly shared a lifetime of love and memories that the Grammy winner will always cherish.

While the singer's husband often let her take the lead and happily fell into the background, the purpose was to praise his wife when he spoke out to the public.

Carl and Dolly's multi-decade marriage didn't include the couple having any children. Over the years, she has opened up about her decision not to have children. Here's what to know.

Dolly and her husband, Carl, on May 30, 1966. The "Jolene" singer said they planned on having kids early into their marriage, though it was never at the top of her priorities, considering she had a thriving country music career to consider.

"When you're a young couple, you think you're going to have kids, but it just wasn't one of those burning things for me," Dolly explained to Saga Magazine in 2023. "I had my career and my music, and I was traveling. If I'd had kids, I'd have stayed at home with them. I'm sure and worried myself to death about them."

The "9 to 5" artist's reservations about having children was also possibly related to her health.

In 1984, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer and also lives with endometriosis. Dolly had a partial hysterectomy in her 30s, which "removes the bulk of the uterus but leaves the cervix intact," per The University of Texas's cancer center. The procedure makes it even more challenging for people with uteruses to conceive. Dolly confessed in her book, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, that the operation put her in a "dark" space.

"Suddenly, I was a middle-aged woman," she recalled. "I went through a dark time."

While Dolly and her husband never had any biological children, she has been a musical mother to many generations. Now that she's older, she has confessed that she and Carl chose not to pursue having children.

"God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine,” Dolly told Billboard in 2014. "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."

Although she didn't give birth to any children, the "Coat of Many Colors" artist has plenty of maternal traits. In addition to raising many fans who grew up with her music, Dolly mentioned in her Billboard interview that she and her husband helped raise several of her nieces and nephews over the years when many of her 11 siblings moved in with her. She is also Miley Cyrus's godmother, who affectionately calls her "Aunt Dolly."