Dolly Parton Revealed She Didn’t Consult Her Husband Before Having Her ‘Tubes Tied’
Dolly Parton and her husband, Carl Dean, never had children. She said that while she loved being around kids, she didn’t want them for herself. During a period of health issues, Parton made the decision to get a partial hysterectomy. While she felt it was the right move, she admitted to feeling guilty that she did it without speaking to her husband first.
Dolly Parton said she got her ‘tubes tied’ without talking to her husband first
In the early 1980s, Parton began dealing with health problems, leading her to ask her doctor for surgical intervention.
“I had to have a couple of D & C’s to control hemorrhaging. I was all nerves,” she wrote in the book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, adding, “I even started to drink some to ease my pain. I finally asked my doctor to tie my tubes so that I could get off the birth control pills.”
Parton said she hadn’t wanted children, so she knew this was the right move.
“Carl and I had never really wanted to have kids,” she wrote. “I love kids. I’m crazy about them, as long as they’re somebody else’s.”
Still, she felt slightly guilty about not wanting children. Her hysterectomy only added to this feeling, especially because she didn’t talk to Dean about it in advance.
“People had often asked me about having children, and I always felt guilty and selfish if I said I didn’t want them,” she wrote. “So sometimes I would just say I couldn’t have them, and that lie made me feel even more guilty. That guilt added to the other pain I was going through. In my mind, it was almost as if I had had an abortion, having my tubes tied and not even consulting Carl about it.”
Dolly Parton didn’t think it would have been fair for her and her husband to have kids
Parton is extremely dedicated to her career. While she likes children, she didn’t think it would be fair to raise them with her fast-paced lifestyle.
“I love kids, but it wouldn’t be fair to put children through the kind of life that I lead,” she told Playgirl in 1981, per the book Dolly on Dolly. “Carl doesn’t want children either. If he did, I would have them, I’m sure.”
Still, Parton spent much of her life helping to raise her younger siblings, nieces, and nephews.
She believes she would have been a good mother
While Parton doesn’t have kids of her own, she loves spending time with them. She noted that she thinks she would have been a good mother. This would have completely changed her life, though.
“I would have been a great mother, I think,” Parton said, per E! News. “I would probably have given up everything else. Because I would’ve felt guilty about that, if I’d have left them [to work]. Everything would have changed. I probably wouldn’t have been a star.”
