Singling out the case of Baroness Thatcher, whose son Mark was convicted of taking part in an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea, the Australian leader said there was the potential for adult children to embarrass their parents.
Ms Gillard said that she had no significant regrets about deciding not to have children.
"You make each choice along the way in life and they add up to big choices in the end," she said.
"I'm comfortable with the choices I have made." While Ms Gillard, 48, does admit to being "wistful about what could have been" at one point in her life, she said she could also see the practical benefits of being childless.
"If a woman had presented as prime minister with a large number of children, people would have then said 'How on earth is she going to give the job the focus it's going to need?'
"This leads you to the conclusion that the only female to present as prime minister that might work is the woman that has adult children, but Margaret Thatcher got into all sorts of scrapes thanks to the actions and scandals of her adult children."
As well as Mark Thatcher's criminal behaviour, Lady Thatcher's daughter Carol has also made headlines after she refused to apologise for calling tennis player Jo Wilfred Tsonga "a golliwog".
Ms Gillard, who is in the middle of an election campaign, has attracted criticism in the past for deciding not to become a mother.
While she was deputy prime minister an opposition MP called her "deliberately barren" and Tony Abbott, the leader of the opposition, has questioned her ability to relate to the electorate because she is childless.