Winfrey shared the news while appearing in the late journalist’s new documentary ‘Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything’

Oprah Winfrey; Barbara Walters.Credit : Taylor Hill/WireImage; John Lamparski/WireImage

NEED TO KNOW

Oprah Winfrey is sharing that one of the reasons she chose not to have kids is because of Barbara Walters
The media mogul spoke about the topic in the new documentary film ‘Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything’
Walters famously had a fraught relationship with her daughter Jackie, whom she adopted with her second husband

Oprah Winfrey is sharing one of the reasons she decided not to have kids — and it has something to do with Barbara Walters.

The media mogul, 71, appeared in the late journalist’s new documentary Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything and shared that the two once spoke about having kids. Walters, who adopted daughter Jackie with her second husband, Lee Guber, after experiencing several miscarriages, famously had a fraught relationship with her daughter.

“I remember her telling me once that there’s nothing more fulfilling than having children, and ‘You should really think about it,’ ” Winfrey, who has been with partner Stedman Graham since 1986, recalls in the documentary. “And I was like, ‘Okay, but I’m looking at you, so no.’”

Winfrey goes on to describe Walters’ relationship with her daughter as “complex” and “charged,” and noted that it was “one of the reasons why I never had children.”

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TV journalist Barbara Walters and daughter Jacqueline Guber attend the Sixth Annual Television Academy Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on January 7, 1990 at 20th Century Fox Studios in Century City, California.Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty

In the film, Walters can be heard via archival footage saying of motherhood, “My world came together. I mean, I was already on the Today Show. And I’d had three miscarriages, and now I had everything.”

But it proved to be an impossible balancing act. Walters was not only an ABC News anchor, but her Barbara Walters specials, where she sat down with everyone from political figures like Fidel Castro and Ronald Reagan to the biggest stars of the day, including Barbra Streisand and Clint Eastwood, were incredibly well-received.

“Today, people are more accepting. You can bring your kid to the office. In those days, if I had brought Jackie into the studio, it would be as if I had bought a dog who was not housebroken,” Walters herself can be heard saying in the documentary.

As Jackie grew older, she and Barbara butted heads, and as a teen, Jackie became a drug user and a runaway and was eventually sent to a boarding school for troubled kids, which she’s said straightened her out.

Barbara Walters and daughter Jackie.DONNA SVENNEVIK/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty

But the relationship remained strained. Former NBC correspondent CynthiaMcFadden tells PEOPLE for this week’s cover story on Walters that it was difficult for her to relate to someone who wasn’t as career-driven as she was: “She couldn’t understand someone like Jackie, who wasn’t racing to the top.”

“They were just so dispositionally and physically unlike each other,” she continued. “It was a struggle. That’s not to say they didn’t love each other, but it wasn’t what she’d hoped for, and probably not what Jackie had hoped for either. ”

She added, “I think it’s important to say that Jackie shouldn’t be held accountable for any of this, and Barbara wouldn’t have wanted her to be. I think this [struggle] was really on the adult side of the equation here. Jackie is a delightful person.” (These days, Jackie stays firmly out of the spotlight.)