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From the way Mariah Carey dotes on dem babies, Monroe and Moroccan, you'd think she was always destined to be a mother.

But the diva confessed to Out magazine, "I never, ever thought I was going to have kids - ever. I remember as a child, saying, 'I'm never going to get married; I'm never going to have kids.'"

Instead, Carey has been married to Nick Cannon since 2008 and gave birth to fraternal twins in 2011. (She was also briefly married to former head of Sony Music, Tommy Mottola.)

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Now, it's hard for her to be away from her kids. "Pulling them away from me is so hard," she said. "It's unconditional love."

Carey explained that she never thought a family was in the cards for her because of her own childhood growing up in a broken home in Long Island, N.Y.

"Here's the thing: would I have been better off if my parents stayed married? No way," she told Out. "They were miserable together, but the grass is always greener. I feel I had a great childhood in some ways, and that's an amazing thing to be able to say. But I also feel I didn't because I was the caretaker and I still am, like it started long before I had any financing."