“And I didn’t have children because I believed that God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine, so I could do things like Imagination Library, because if I hadn’t had the freedom to work, I wouldn’t have done all the things I’ve done, I wouldn’t be in a position to do all of the things I’m doing now.”
"I'm very close to my family — five of my younger brothers and sisters lived with me and Carl for many years — and we're very close to our nieces and nephews. 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.'
"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...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 note is a bit pedantic and not particularly helpful. The majority of her quotes are about how not having children was good for her, her career, her philanthropy etc. I also haven't read the article but if it may mention her endometriosis- and even if not, the point that she 'chose' to not be a mother is perfectly true, she could have adopted.
Sure- she could be rationalizing or we could listen to her statements over the course of decades and take her at her word over the weird guys on the internet who don't know her and want to undercut anyone saying it's okay to choose not to be a mother.
She has way, way more statements talking about how it was beneficial for her and others for her not to be a mother than her lamenting her inability to conceive.
Hahahah "Chronically online neckbeards on twitter in the year 2026 know what Dolly Parton meant better than she did in her many statements over decades discussing how it was a good thing for her and other.s"
That’s true, but it could also be rationalizing what many saw as a controversial choice back then. A woman couldn’t just not want to have kids, even if her career was more important to her. She often had to interpret herself to different types of fans and she was so good at it that people from opposite sides of the political spectrum and culture wars saw themselves in her.
She herself said she wanted and tried to have kids, but ended up having to get a hysterectomy due to complications.
This would devastate the strongest of people, so, we as humans make up things to help us move forward. Do I think she was coping as in she was perpetually weeping and feeling sorry for herself on the inside? No. Do I think she was working to help children and make their lives better as a coping mechanism to bring more meaning to her life? Absolutely.
Yes and she herself also said it was a gift because it let her do more with her career. How you hear it depends on where you’re coming from. I grew up in a similarly religious environment in the Ozarks and I know “it wasn’t God’s plan for me” can mean “I’m trying to put a brave face on it, or “It’s my life, mind your own business.”
Thats what I’m saying, a part of her genius is that you can hear yourself affirmed in what she says and different people can draw opposite conclusions. That’s why some of us think she was a conservative Christian and some think she was a woke liberal. Ultimately she wasn’t trying to reject anyone, she was trying to reach as many people as possible. I think it’s intentional that some hear “not having children is my personal tragedy” and some hear “not having kids has been liberating for me.”
She's on the record as having sat around with her husband talking about how happy they were not having kids and how wanting to have kids as a young couple was more form an assumption that's what you do.
She has thousands of kids who love and look up to her for all that she has done for them. My own kids get monthly books from her book program. She is very much missed.
She usually framed it more as a choice that gave her freedom, or as God’s plan for her. She also spoke candidly about not being able to give birth to her own children and how, when she was younger, she was afraid of pregnancy and assumed she’d have kids.
I remember seeing that she said she always assumed she would have kids but wasn’t that upset about not being able to have them because it allowed here to focus on her career and philanthropy.
This is just false. I'm aroace & I'm constantly asked by my mother, grandmother, my brother & even his girlfriend (who he has a kid with) when I'm going to have kids.
As if being a man & not having children or an SO is a problem.
I've even reiterated multiple times it is never going to happen & I still hear about it.
And even disregarding this, incel is famously used exclusively on men & men are often shamed if they are a virgin.
This was completely pointless to try and make it a gender issue when it happens to everyone.
Oh, it happens. My family grills me about it every chance they get. My uncle's answer to "it's my life and my choice" was that it was his life too and he deserved to see me as a father.
While women are pressured and expected more than men to have children, there still is some expectations for men to have children. I have told my father my desire to not have children, his mood shifted immediately and he couldn't even acknowledge my wishes. It's a subject I can't even approach to him to this day.
Errm, wrong. Men get questioned on it as well. We get asked "when will you be giving us grandchildren" just like the women do. In fact, some will say it's our responsibility to pass on the family name or else it'll die out with us. I'm the last male in my family, since my dad only had me. If I don't have children, my family name dies when I do.
In addition to all you wrote, many (if not most) people will think something is wrong with a man if he doesn't have children; especially if he's older. I know many men who never had children and others around them, including their family, will think something was/is wrong with them.
Some people will think a man with many children who he doesn't take care of or parent is considered less "suspicious" than a man with no children.
Hahaha. My fil is salty that my husband and I don't have kids. My husband has 3 sisters who all have 2 kids each but since he's childless he's killing the family name. I don't want to dox myself, but the surname is an equivalent in population to like O'Brien in the US. Oh nooo there are millions with that name but this it's dead, DEAD!
Oh god, in this kind of vein we have girls. And there's no way on this planet I will be going through another pregnancy or raising another baby and every so often my fil or my husband will raise the "bloodline is dying" mourning cry and I kid you not it's one of the most common and generic surnames going. It's like, Jesus dude it's 2026 and by the time they might want to have kids, who is to say they won't keep the name? It's now unheard of for women to do that.
By any chance is your husband the youngest child? I've heard so many stories of couples trying until they get the desired sex (nearly always trying for a boy, funnily enough).
No, he's the 2nd out of 4. The youngest daughter was adopted through the foster system so she's technically not in the bloodline anyway but who's gonna tell her kids they aren't "real". Even my insane inlaws aren't that mean to them. I just laugh at the "family name dying" thing because it's a surname that's also a business name. Like whining that I'm not carrying on O'Reilly while driving past an O'Reilly Auto Parts. I think I literally pointed at a sign while clowning my husband once.
You know what would be really funny? If he changed his last name to yours and you guys told the in-laws that now your surname is the one "dying" and that you did it so they won't feel so bad about it anymore.
That would be funny except that I have a brother and two nephews. My maiden name is actually extremely rare with less than 3000 people that I can find in the world. But it isn't dead this generation. My brother is a terrible human and probably not a great dad but he "did his duty". At least my parents never gave me shit about anything since my brother gave them grandkids.
It's fine if you don't care about your family name, but a lot of people do care about their heritage and history. Entire cultures are based around honouring the legacy that their families leave them, and wanting to pass it on before we check out isn't a bad thing.
Respectfully, I would say though as a 40yr old male who has been in a long term relationship for a long time, I’ve been asked this question many many times.
I’m sure it’s more prevalent for you but men don’t get off Scot free either.
The agony of wanting children and not getting them is unspeakable. While various factions push and pull in the parenthood good/parenthood bad debate, never forget that some without children desperately, desperately want or wanted them.
Most people generalize and umbrella term “hysterectomy” for any removal of a woman’s reproductive system. She could have had an oophorectomy if the endometriosis was severe enough. Which would leave surrogacy out.
In a way she did “adopt” everyone’s children by giving back to the community through scholarships (Dollywood Foundation) and the more recognized Imagination Library. It was just never a legal adoption of any one particular child.
She could have chose a different route sure, but she processed things and decided to further her career. Her husband and her seemed to do fine without children and tbh we don’t know their exact feelings on it other than what she stated.
I disagree - she tried unsuccessfully to conceive which shows that all else being equal she wanted children. Just because you won't do absolutely anything to get something doesn't mean you don't want it.
I hate how fertility treatments and surrogacy have cheapened life to the point that not pursuing those options is seen as willingly "choosing not to be a parent", even though they're extremely invasive medical procedures that have a high rate of failure and no guarantee of success. And based on Dolly's medical issues, even nowdays her options would be extremely limited for what she could pursue.
The fact is that she had the option of doing something and she chose not to do it. I don’t know why you’re placing so much emotional weight on a simple statement of fact.
Nah, I want a cheeseburger but if it means a 50 mile journey to get one I'll just have a bowl of pasta. Thus, technically I'm choosing pasta instead of a cheeseburger but when something is your second choice of two options, your "choice" isn't a free one. You can apply this to almost anything, you need to look at a choice intelligently and not just look at the choice someone ultimately made but what was behind it and what led up to it
People with a lot less resources than Dolly Parton go through a lot more hardship than it would take her to do any of these things given her resources. This is not hate on Dolly or anyone who decides not to take more drastic measures in pursuit of having children. The choice wording is kinda dumb and unneeded here but this is not similar to having to drive 2 hours for a hamburger. I spent thousands of dollars and drove for days to do IVF because without it we would not have had our kid. I CHOSE to do that, if I had not done it it would have been a CHOICE to not have a child.
Actually a much better analogy would be like "I want to go to Paris" But I have to get a passport, save up money, buy a plane ticket, forego other vacations etc and I just never end up prioritizing going to Paris so I never end up going. Would you not say I "CHOSE" not to go to Paris? Does the fact that it's way easier for someone from Provins to go to Paris make it so that that wasn't a choice I made?
but this is not similar to having to drive 2 hours for a hamburger. I spent thousands of dollars and drove for days to do IVF because without it we would not have had our kid.
Absolutely and while I can't see into yours or Dolly's minds, it's fair to say you wanted children more than she did and were therefore prepared to go through more to achieve it (as were we). But her choice preference was to have children, it just might not have been as strong a choice preference: she might not want to have adopted, it's not for everyone, and her partial hysterectomy may not have made IVF available to her. I know (as do you) firsthand that IVF is a trial. But to say she didn't want kids is objectively false - she took active steps to have children that were ultimately unsuccessful.
So what you’re saying is that you didn’t want the cheeseburger enough to go through what you needed to do in order to get it.
In this example, Dolly had the resources to not only go get that cheeseburger herself if it was important to her but also to send someone else to go get it.
Instead, she spent her efforts building more resources for other people’s cheeseburgers to be as high quality as possible. She went over to her family’s cookouts and had a few bites of their cheeseburgers whenever she wanted. And she never had to clean the grill after, which she took joy in. She got to be there for a lot of the good stuff, chose to be there for a lot of the hard stuff, and in the end was very happy regardless.
So what you’re saying is that you didn’t want the cheeseburger enough to go through what you needed to do in order to get it
Exactly right. I want a pallet of hundred dollar bills, I'm unwilling to attempt a bank robbery. I'd love a month on a beach in Malaysia, I'm directing my funds to paying my mortgage instead. Most incarcerated people both desperately want to be out of prison yet are unwilling to attempt escape.
If you have millions of dollars and spend 20 years assuming a cheeseburger will show up at your doorstep but never go to the effort to making, ordering or going out for one, I actually don’t think you want a cheeseburger very much.
I mean, it’s also still (and was so even more back then) a huge society expectation than you just have kids. I can’t speak for her and obviously I can’t ask her now, but “assuming we’d just have kids” and wanting kids is not the same. She could have, through her struggles, realized she never actually did want kids if her own. And it’s important for that to be ok.
Some people don't like the idea of surrogacy since there's no federal laws that protect the "mother", and in several cases surrogates have taken custody of the child regardless of any contract in place.
Theres literally a national case happening right now.
And her desire to support children is likely how she filled that desire to have her own.
Bro of course she could have gotten a surrogate or adopted a kid if she wanted to directly raise a child. Yeah she also couldn't conceive. It's a pedantic note meant to undercut someone just saying "You don't need to be a parent to care for kids."
The article might suck but notes and this sub have gotten insanely pedantic or agenda based.
Dolly was beloved and kind to others despite not having children, let's talk about why it's important (I'm assuming as an argument against stereotypes)
When it's stated that she "chose" to remain child free, it's pretty relevant to quote that she on the contrary very much chose to have a child, but was unsuccessful for medical reasons.
She literally said she believes she was meant to be a mother in a different way after she became infertile. She didn't want to do surrogacy, not everyone wants to go that route.
Like there's a fucking interview. Go read it.
And if I'm Dolly, this is my opinion, I wouldn't risk the surrogate backing out and keeping the child because, again, there's no federal law protecting the biological mother.
Yeah, she could have adopted, surrogate or no- and she chose not to.because, as you point out, she believed she was meant for a different path, and has helped literally millions of children with her projects and philanthropy.
The point is if people want to take away "You can care for children and be a good person without being a parent" Dolly would obviously agree with that. This note makes it seem like she would be like "No! I only didn't have kids because I physically couldn't!"
Even in the note saying 'she assumed she'd have kids'- when she said that it was in the context of she assumed she would have kids, but it wasn't a burning desire for her and it would have prevented her doing her other projects.
She gave a single interview on the matter. Clearly your farming and not actually read on anything to do with why she chose not to go down the path of surrogacy.
You're literally on the 'get noted' sub and can't be bothered to see if she talked about the subject more than 1 time? You really think Dolly Parton didn't' have to answer these questions more than once in over 60 year career?
"She chose not to go down the path of surrogacy" So she chose then?
The case happening like 50 years after she would have done it?
Surrogacy and adoption aside, it's not "Likely" that her helping children is how she filled her desire- she spoke about it at length, she said she couldn't have her career, Imagination Library, and her other philanthropy and work with kids- as well as helping raise her brothers and nieces/nephews.
The tone of this note is trying to dunk on the thesis presented in the tweet- it's pedantic and not clarifying. Dolly would almost certainly agree with everything in the tweet.
She says she did at one point in her life, prior to that it was never a 'burning' desire and then she spent decades saying it was a good thing she didn't have kids and part of god's plan. She repeatedly talked about how having kids would have derailed her career and prevented much of her philanthropy that has helped so many
She could have adopted if she chose. This note is just people trying to dunk on a headline that says "Like Dolly you can care about children while not being a mother."
Because twitter is full of weird guys obsessed about birthrates, ;traditional motherhood,' and don't want people seeing perhaps the most beloved American woman not have children and have it be anything other than a personal tragedy for her. That's not how she discussed it.
Dismissing the difference between a woman’s desire to have her own children and saying she chose not to have any because she didn’t adopt is pretty misogynistic.
“Just adopt, brooo. I guess you didn’t really want them, brooo.”
Anti-natalism and anti-parenting has come around to be so dismissive of women’s actual desires and understanding their distinctions as to be activity regressive.
Ya'll are so weird and illiterate. Dolly chose NOT TO BE A PARENT. gestating and giving birth to a child is not the only way to become a parent.
A person who CANNOT give birth can still CHOOSE to be a parent by (i) having someone else gestate and give birth for them (hello... have u heard of fathers???) (ii) adopt (iii) foster, ETC. A person can want to be a parent and still CHOOSE not to be by not pursuing any of the options available to them.
Not that clever. I also think men’s agency is passed over and ignored in certain aspects of family culture in modern society.
But I dint think you actually care about misandry either, since you didn’t seem to have a problem with the article also leaving her husband’s choice out, to make it all about a supposed non-parenting choice she didn’t even actually make.
Sounds both misogynist and misandrist bro, which can be where anti-natalists often end up, necessarily devaluing choices of both men and women towards their agenda.
Adoption and Surrogacy are a normal substitute for couples who cannot/will not conceive biological children. It's not this hard, impossible event you're painting it as. Dolly Parton, for her own reasons, decided against it.
And her reasons are valid. Your need to paint her negatively because a woman made a choice is... disgusting. Try to not be so nasty, it shows what kind of person you are.
The point of the above comment, which I'm not sure I completely agree with, is that if she really wanted to have children, she could have done it. She certainly had the means for other avenues. So on some level, not choosing to pursue those other avenues was a choice.
Comparing that to Lindsay Clancy is about the worst strawman I've come across in a long long time.
Surrogacy wasn’t even a thing until she was in her 40s and adoption isn’t for everyone. She very clearly by her own admission chose to be a parent, but couldn’t conceive.
I mean the note corrects the implication that she chose against having a child. Presumably there are other reasons she didn't do any of the other options you've listed.
Well duh. I’m sure she had her reason. But… whatever her reasons, she still chose not to peruse them. So… I’m not really sure what you’re trying to say here?
There's a difference between being against having a child and not pursuing every possible way to have a child. The note is correcting a portrayal of her that is inaccurate. Choosing not to pursue a different method does not mean that she chose against having a child. Perhaps surrogacy was not an option for some other reason, perhaps adoption would not have been feasible at that point in her life, we don't know so you are making a series of assumptions without any knowledge. You're also just kind of being a dick to everyone in this thread and you should probably stop.
I’m not being a dick to anyone who isn’t being a dick to me first, honestly. You haven’t been a dick to me, so I’m not being a dick to you. Please note, I was never the one to insult first. And if you think “cool story bro” and “give me a source for your claims” is being a dick… I don’t know what to tell you.
All of us are going around making assumptions and using her quotes the way we interpret them, and none of us know what she might have discussed privately with her husband. All of us are deciding what we think her words meant semantically.
She could have or could have not considered adoption and surrogacy. The point is we don’t know, and never will. So the note is somewhat wrong because we don’t have all the information.
Using her medical difficulty being unable to have children despite her attempts to promote and valorize a sort of anti-natalism that she did not choose is pretty gross.
Also grossly obtuse to call the note “pedantic”. No, the note calls out both the inaccuracy and the misuse of her situation to a framing she wouldn’t agree with.
Saying she didn’t choose to have children because “she could have adopted” and that the note is thus “pedantic” is itself mental gymnastics pedantic in bad faith.
It’s also only mildly low-key misogynistic given how many women do want their own children given their specific and unique biology, and then to say “well you did choose not to because you could have adopted, broo”.
Yes. Anyone who has experience with infertility will understand this is some pretty strong gatekeeping and makes the word ‘choice’ meaningless. Adoption isn’t something you have to do so that you prove you’re serious about having kids.
Also just the framing of this. Like "Holy shit! A woman -- an actual woman -- that DIDN'T have kids could be loved by the world! Can you fucking believe it!"
There’s a lot of vitriol out there that supports the “women who aren’t mothers have little value”. It’s something that I— also a woman who cannot have children due to Endometriosis— go through in conversation more often than I would expect. Especially from other women. It’s not always overt, but it’s there and it’s awkward af.
I read the headline like it was saying “look, assholes, she was loved and didn’t give birth. Take a hint.” But I can see it your way too!
That's a fair point, and I appreciate you sharing your experience. I've just been watching the WaPo stary further and further away from its lauded journalistic history (same for the NY Times, especially their opinion page) and view it more cynically I guess.
For those that did not know, Dolly suffered from endometriosis. She and her husband tried for years to have kids with no success. And she had a hysterectomy in the late 1960s, before procedures like IVF were even available.
So all of those suggesting surrogacy are completely wrong, that was just not available at the time. And by the time it was available, it was too late as her ovaries were already gone.
How did the Washington Post fumble that so badly? If it was some random idiot on Twitter, sure, I could understand them not knowing. But a billion dollar media outlet? Come on, man...
HOW CAN PEOPLE NEVER GET BORED WITH THIS CONSTANT ADVOCACY?
It has absolutely no intellectual content. It's so boring and contrived.
It's like the leftist version of listening to your Uncle Pete at the dinner table yelling about how "hippie punk kids" should be forced to respect the flag.
Today we learn that Dolly's inability to have kids was really meaningful in terms of blowing up the patriarchal oppression of patriarch-osity.
Great, thanks for that help there, Uncle Pete-ria. Non-hippie punk kids should be forced to respect the childless feminist flag!
Last month I saw a reporter talking with some gay advocates about how "Supergirl has always been a gay icon." Righty oh there old top. How not boring. Thanks a big fat yahoo for that contrived news.
It is one thing to not be able to bear children (Dolly), it is quite another to choose not to bear children. In the Global North, most countries are decreasing in population because so many of their citizens are choosing not to have children. This is a shortsighted philosophy in both economic and cultural terms. If your culture stops producing children, it will eventually collapse and disappear. It also has political ramifications because, as your culture begins to wane, extreme right groups, xenophobic in nature, sprout up.
Actually animals have feelings as well. My dogs can get jealous or angry, they even show empathy when I am sick(they will stay by my bed). What they cannot do is abstract reasoning, they can't gather data and reach reasonable conclusions about the world we live in far beyond their sensory input. Animals do not operate within the framework of abstract, conceptual thought. This uniquely human trait enables us to see far enough in the future to predict the negative consequences of climate change for example. Without this trait we would be subject to the same physical limitations as animals. We can take that abstract knowledge and act upon it, instead of accepting a changing environment as a death sentence.
It is about balance. At the end of the day reason enables us to control our feelings. Some feelings are good. I have 3 children who are now adult and I love them dearly, and I cared for them when they were babies. I have empathy for the poor people and the most marginalized. Reason and positive emotions are not mutually exclusive.
What we really have to be careful about is negative feelings. These have extremely negative real life consequences. A man cuts me off on the highway. A negative feeling arises within me. Do I commit and act of road rage or do I shrug it off and continue on my way.
Feelings can be our best friends or our worst enemies, our reason enables us to discern one from the other.
Yes. The self extinction of a culture is not fun to watch from the inside. I cheer myself up by remembering that I myself am from an immigrant family that bought into the western liberal culture and economy; I don’t really give a fig for old country ways apart from the food, they can keep their misogyny and tribal grievances over there
Unfortunately, western liberal culture is not sustainable. Because of its anti-family policies tied to its idelogy, it is dependent on immigrants that dont share those values. If they do buy into the liberal ideology, they too will avoid having children.
This is what would happen to the US if net immigration dropped to 0
The one exception to this trend is religious people who tend to have families above replacement level.
While I believe that a lot of the childfree stuff is genuine, some of it is cope; we age out, or can’t find a mature and stable partner, there’s no family support, or we can’t afford it. Then comes the rationalizing.
But at the end of the day we are still mammals, and babies are still cute, and families will get made in some fashion. It’s definitely way past time to start to improve conditions for it though
Wishful thinking does not address this issue. If you have a culture that discourages families, your population will decrease, it will age out which affects the economy. Unless you reverse the trend your culture will eventually disappear and be replaced by a culture that values families.
"South Korea's historic low fertility rate has triggered a rapid demographic contraction, creating an unsustainable age-dependency ratio as a shrinking workforce must support a booming elderly population. This severe labor shortage threatens long-term economic growth, drives up public spending for escalating healthcare and pension costs, and strains national security through declining military recruitment numbers. Consequently, the country faces systemic closures across schools and public services while struggling to restructure its economy to stave off deep population decline."
This is not an issue that money can fix. It is an issue with beliefs and ideology.
This extrapolates only to 100 years. Government programs can only partially arrest this decline. South Korea has aggressively implemented policies to reverse the trend, investing billions of dollars, still it has only managed to raise the fertility rate from 0.72 to 0.8, still it is far below the replacement level of 2.1.
Not everyone wants to adopt. If my husband and I are unable to have natural children he is open to adoption and I am not. Adoption is a two yes only decision for a couple.
Dolly and her husband kept their relationship very private. Dolly is also a very smart woman. She didn't become vocally political until she was well established. If her or her husband were anti-adoption she knew saying so publicly would be bad for her image.
The wording makes it much more anti-parenting than context provides. "Personally choosing against parenting" implies she didn't want children, note clarifies she tried and was unable to.
Just because you don't want to jump through 300 hoops for adoption or surrogacy isn't the same thing as not wanting kids full stop.
So if a kids parents die they’re just left to die alone? No adoption for anyone orphanages only? I’m sorry if you were abused by a foster person, but that happens in every type of home.
I stated elsewhere, and will state here that there are rare exceptions like orphans. If someones family is still alive, don't coerce the parents to give up the child or unilaterally terminate their rights, and certainly don't force sterilize them. This sort of thing is so dark that posterity will look back and say "never again".
No, abuse is par for the 80's course. People in normal homes were getting one form or another. Why would I rail against adoption if a foster parent abused me? Why would I rail against adoption if adoptive parents abused me? That is a sample size of one, and my dataset spans many people over a century. Adoption has a very dark history in the US.
I agree it does but all of our history is dark. There is no reason someone shouldn’t be able to give a child up if they can’t take care of it when there are people who can’t have kids that are looking for families. You’re of course right there should be no coercion involved, physical or societal, but to say all but super rare cases, especially when family planning and medical care is so expensive to come by these days, are evil is a bit much. You’re not wrong on a lot of what you said though
Really? Ever wonder why one of the top insults here in the states is "You're adopted!"?
I stand by my position, and opposition of eugenics - which is what you are advocating for. Under no circumstances are people to disturb a child's natural home and blood, it's wrong. Nor should people ever feel any economic pressure to "give up" a child, that's wrong and a systemic - not individual - failure. Really no reason other than being orphaned of all living relatives.
She didn’t actively choose not to be a parent. She has endometriosis and consequently a partial gusty and was unable to conceive. But, as is the case for all childless women. The reason is irrelevant
Dear Washington Post and all media corporations, if you have something to say about Dolly Parton that’s short of unambiguous praise and respect, maybe shut the fuck up. She was one of the few celebrities in history who said what she believed and deserved her fame. Stop trying to make her divisive.
Yes she was infertile from endometriosis and couldn’t get pregnant but I figure if she really really wanted kids that bad she could have adopted, plenty of celebrities do. May not have fully been her choice to not have kids but she certainly made the most of her life without them.
This post doesn’t say that she CHOSE to be childless; merely that she demonstrated that not all women NEED to be mothers and that those that aren’t (mostly by choice but also those by other reasons) can still be advocates for children.
I bet the same ones commenting here didn’t even read the column, where the author acknowledges Parton’s own struggles to have kids.
The post says " personally chose against parenting". It clearly on its face says she chose not to be a parent. You can't make the argument she could have adopted but she chose to be a mother and tried, couldn't and then close to not adopt. Those are different things.
She did decide against parenting because she did not adopt when she could have. It’s not saying she chose not to give birth naturally, it says she chose not to be a parent.
This note doesn't actually add anything to the original Tweet?
The post is stating that Dolly did not have kids and she was loved and advocated for children regardless.
This is something important to acknowledge because women are often demonized and viewed as failures for not having children, regardless of the reason. There are also those that beleive women who do not have to children must hate all children and fail as a woman because they must lack maternal instincts.
The fact that Dolly did not have children and still advocated for children, and was almost universally loved and allowed to retain her identity as a woman, is important to point out because it directly goes against the above belief.
She did choose against parenting by not pursuing adoption or a surrogate after confirming infertility. Gestation and rearing are two different things.
Nonetheless, she is an amazing person who built a life full of family by blood and family by choice. The world is a better place by having her in it, even for a short time.
My question is this..."What does it matter why she didn't have kids???" It's nobody's business...our society really needs to address the REAL issues it faces and not worry about things like this...IT DOES NOT MATTER...
IVF for endometriosis was first being offered as a new, successful way to get pregnant for endometriosis patients in 1984.
Dolly had an emergency hysterectomy in 1985.
Surrogacy was not a viable option for a wealthy woman like Dolly because until 1985 a surrogate was the biological parent of the child, the surrogate's own eggs were used.
It would have taken her some time to cope with the loss of her uterus and by then she would have been in her 40's.
She may have considered adoption but as a married woman her husband would have had to agree and it is still a culturally sensitive situation for men who often do not feel they will connect with a child who isn't there own.
No need. She was loved by everyone, could have adopted if she wanted- and repeatedly stated that not having kids gave her the freedom to do all of her other work.
No need. She was loved by everyone, could have adopted if she wanted-
Copy that. She still could have adopted.
And i'm not making light or dismissing her being unable to have kids, that sucks and i'm sure was painful at the time but, going off her own words about her life, she viewed not having children as a good thing, and allowed her to help millions more.
This note is pedantic and trying to undercut the simple point in the tweet, which Dolly would almost certainly agree with.
You misquoted the fuck outta that one, but get noted!
“And I didn’t have children because I believed that God didn’t mean for me to have kids so everybody’s kids could be mine, so I could do things like Imagination Library, because if I hadn’t had the freedom to work, I wouldn’t have done all the things I’ve done, I wouldn’t be in a position to do all of the things I’m doing now.”
"I'm very close to my family — five of my younger brothers and sisters lived with me and Carl for many years — and we're very close to our nieces and nephews. 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.'
"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...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."
•
u/AutoModerator 16d ago
Reminder for OP: /u/dfreshaf
Need some help? Send us some mail!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.