Why Oprah Winfrey chose not to have kids

Oprah Winfrey has practically raised a nation of "Oprah Winfrey Show" viewers, but the mogul nonetheless thinks that her own biological progeny wouldn't be as enraptured.

"If I had kids, my kids would hate me," Winfrey told the Hollywood Reporter in a new interview. "They would have ended up on the equivalent of the 'Oprah' show talking about me; because something [in my life] would have had to suffer and it would've probably been them."

Winfrey, 59, doesn't seem to regret her decision to forgo parenthood in favor of her career. After all, especially in comparison to her BFF Gayle King, motherhood hadn't been on the front of her mind as she grew up.

"Gayle was the kind of kid who, in seventh grade Home Ec class, was writing down her name and the names of her children," Winfrey said. "While she was having those kind of daydreams, I was having daydreams about how I could be Martin Luther King."

Her desire to foster change can be seen in her OWN network, which she struggled to launch following the end of her daily daytime talk show in 2011.

"I had become so accustomed to succeeding that I no longer even remembered what it was like to fail," Winfrey said of that rough period that began roughly three years ago. "This has been the great climb of my life. But I still have a long way to go."