Ina Garten ‘Couldn’t Understand Why People Had Kids’ (Exclusive)

Ina Garten’s upbringing was not anything she wanted to recreate with her own family.

In her new memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, the Barefoot Contessa star reveals that her “horrible childhood” in Stamford, Conn., was filled with emotional and physical abuse from her late parents, Charles and Florence Rosenberg. So by the time she was settled into her marriage with husband Jeffrey Garten, she had long decided she would never have children.

“I grew up in a family that wasn’t a happy family, so I couldn’t understand why people had kids,” Ina tells PEOPLE for this week’s cover story. “Nobody had any fun in my family. Now I understand it, but at the time, when I was 25 and 30, I just didn’t. It was nothing I really wanted to do.”

Ina writes of her troubled childhood in her memoir (excerpted exclusively in PEOPLE).

“My parents had more of a ‘my way or the highway’ approach to child-­rearing, and any attempts at noncompliance were met with pretty serious anger. Questioning what they expected me to wear, or when to do my homework, was totally unacceptable,” she writes.

“I was only three when I begged our babysitter not to tell my father I had done something he would disapprove of because I was terrified of the consequences. When he got angry, which was often, anything could happen. He’d hit me or pull me around by my hair. I was trapped in a cycle of neglect and abuse. My parents didn’t believe in me or my potential, but they held me to impossibly high (and arbitrary) standards, nonetheless.”

For more on Ina Garten, including the the full excerpt from her memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

She cites a saying that explains her situation: “What goes in early goes in deep.”

“After my experience, my mind was closed to the possibility of having my own child. Jeffrey and I were content with our choices and our life,” she adds.

Today, Ina has no regrets. “Dolly Parton once opened up to Oprah Winfrey about why she didn’t have children. She said, ‘If I hadn’t had the freedom to work, I wouldn’t have done all the things I’ve done.’ I feel the same way,” writes Ina.

She has written 13 cookbooks, won six Daytime Emmy Awards for her Food Network shows and built a devoted fan base who adore her for her approachable style and easy, foolproof recipes. She ends her memoir with a poignant, full-circle moment.

“When I walk up the street, and someone smiles, leans in, and whispers, ‘Ina, I love you!’ I always remember my father telling me, ‘No one will ever love you.’ It’s like this private cosmic joke for me. Did my life unfold this way because I wanted to overcome my parents’ harsh criticism? Or despite it? I’ll never know, but one thing I know for sure is that everything changed when I met Jeffrey. This is when my life began. We all need only one person to believe in us, and for me, that person is Jeffrey. With his love and support, I learned to believe in myself and found happiness and peace.”

Be Ready When the Luck Happens comes out Oct. 1 from Crown Publishing Group and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.