whoa jambo, the sympathy card is way too evil!
My mother is a selfish woman with an emotional age somewhere about 14. Like Helliebean, she doesn't remain interested in kids beyond about 8/9 years old (they aren't "cute" anymore). I have a much younger sister of 18, who is also emotionally stunted to about the 14 year level, so the two of them make an excellent pair. My mum irritates the hell out of me. Can't relate to her but love the analogy of "Cuckoo in the nest" used previously.
My mother refuses to acknowledge any emotional neglect, tries to deflect the blame to anyone else she can think of. As a last resort, she will deflect the blame to me, by saying "What are you saying? That I'm a bad mother?" (tears, tears, boo hoo). She's worse when she has a man in her life as becomes much more arrogant and likely to fall out with me. When she's on her own again she wants to be friends.
I'm overdue for my first baby. She really wants to be involved and has said "I want to be as close to you as I am to your sister". She misses the point - she didn't give my sister years of emotional abuse and, more importantly, we have absolutely nothing in common and I can't stand spending time with her! I'm afraid she isn't going to spend time with her grandchild on an unsupervised basis because I just don't trust her, and I can't have her too involved in our lives because she is too unpredictable.
I also wish things were different, but at least we have learned things from our experiences that (probably) make us better parents and better people. The real challenge is not only to make sure it doesn't happen with your own children, but to make sure they don't find out the true extent of your feelings towards your own parents until they are old enough to understand