Hard to go wrong when you follow Dolly Parton'slead.
Of course, it's widely known that Dolly is the godmother to pop star Miley Cyrus, and the two of them have worked together many times in the past.
And while they obviously have a shared love of music in common, Miley takes Dolly's advice on all sorts of things aside from just her career, especially when it comes to the topic of whether or not she'll have children of her own.
In an interview with W Magazine that came out this week, Miley talked about finally feeling free to be herself both personally and professionally:
"I love being an adult. I have a rule that I don’t look up or don’t look down at anyone. I just look, which allows me the clarity to see the world for what it really is and people for who they really are. I look at myself almost every day in the mirror and I say, 'I am a woman.'
And at 31 years old now, she finds herself thinking a lot about whether or not she'll have kids one day, because like Dolly has said many times before, she feels like her fans are her children in some way:
"I’m 31 now, and I still don’t know if I want kids or not. I feel like my fans kind of are my kids in some way. I’ve heard Dolly say that too, because she didn’t have kids."
Dolly has spoken before on the topic of why she never had kids with her husband of 58 years, Carl Dean, saying that it ultimately wasn't in the cards for them because of health issues and other reasons. In a 2014 interview with The Guardian, Dolly talked some about how her life would be different if they did have kids:
“You always wonder… My husband and I, when we first got married, we thought about if we had kids, what would they look like? Would they be tall… because he’s tall? Or would they be little squats like me?”
They even had a name picked out for a little girl.
“If we’d had a girl, she was gonna be called Carla… Anyway, we talked about it, and we dreamed it, but it wasn’t meant to be. Now that we’re older? We’re glad.I would have been a great mother, I think. I would probably have given up everything else. Because I would’ve felt guilty about that, if I’d have left them to work, to tour.”
Of course, having children would’ve made Dolly’s grueling work schedule all the more complex, and she doesn’t know if she would be the Dolly we all know and love today if she would’ve given parts of that up:
“Everything would have changed. I probably wouldn’t have been a star.”
Though she never had her own children, she started Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in 1988, which inspires young kids to read and achieve success in school. She has several children’s books and CDs under her belt, too.
Dolly has talked about this previously in other interviews, saying ultimately, she believed God didn’t mean for her to have her own kids. She wanted everybody’s to be hers… so she could be a fairy godmother to all of us. Where do I sign up for that?
Sounds like Miley has the same idea, and like I said, it certainly worked out quite well for queen Dolly.
You can check out some of the gorgeous photos of Miley from the feature below.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7wH4zbRa3u/
