Country singer and cultural icon Dolly Parton is still going strong in her career at the age of 77. Speaking to “The Today Show” to promote her first ever children’s album “I Believe in You,” host Matt Lauer discussed how children seem drawn to the singer. “I have that high-pitched voice … I look like Mother Goose or one of those over-exaggerated characters, and kids just relate to that,” agreed Parton. Proceeds from this latest album will go towards Parton’s Imagination Library, her non-profit which sends out free books to kids, birth to Kindergarten. She stated she is experiencing her “second childhood” with this latest album.

Despite her strong connection to children and being married to her husband, Carl Dean, for 57 years, Parton herself has no children. However, she believes it was part of God’s plan for her. “God has a plan for everything. I think it probably was his plan for me not to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine. And they are now,” she told Lauer. Speaking to Billboard in 2014, Parton stated that having kids had been part of her and Dean’s plan. “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,” she said. She added that she and Dean were now grateful that they didn’t have to worry about their own children. 

Hello Magazine speculated that part of the reason Parton didn’t have her own biological children could be medical. In her book Dolly on Dolly: Interviews and Encounters with Dolly Parton, released in 2017, Parton revealed that she had been diagnosed with endometriosis, a condition that causes tissue similar to what grows in the uterus to grow in areas where it doesn’t belong, such as the ovaries or fallopian tubes. It can be extremely painful and cause fertility issues. Parton had a partial hysterectomy at the age of 36 due to complications of her endometriosis, leaving her unable to have her own children naturally. Speaking to Saga Exceptional, she stated she hadn’t “missed it like I thought I might.” She said she had other things to keep her busy. “I had my career and my music and I was travelling.” She also shared that the state of the world would have made her worried for her own children. “If I’d had kids, I’d have stayed home with them, I’m sure, and worried myself to death about them. With everything that’s going on, I’d hate to be bringing a child into this world right now.”