Catherine Connors doesn’t expect help with Emilia and Jasper from her mother. ‘‘She was not interested in baby-sitting,’’ she said.

By JOANNE KAUFMAN

For every Marian Robinson, who retired from her job to take full-time care of her grandchildren, Malia and Sasha Obama, while their parents were busy with other things last year, there is a Judy Connors, who loves her two grandchildren but has no interest in children’s games or bedtime stories.

“When I heard about the Obama grandmother, I thought I might like to move into the White House, too,” said Ms. Connors, who is 67. “But I’d hire someone to look after the kids.”

Her daughter, Catherine Connors, a 38-year-old writer in Toronto, is well aware of her mother’s attitude. Whenever she hears about families in which the grandparents love to help out, she has only one thought: “This is so not my life.”

It is not new for young mothers to be surprised and hurt at how little their own mothers rush over to baby-sit. Still, stories of intergenerational care like the ones coming from the White House can bring those feelings to the surface - and to a boil.

“There are some parents who probably don’t have a realistic expectation of how invested their parents should be in the grandchildren,” said Dr. Gail Saltz, a Manhattan psychiatrist. “But because this generation’s children are the center of their universe, it’s hard not to take the grandparents’ ‘why should I be bothered?’ attitude personally.”

For some resentful adult children who are short of cash, time and money are fungible commodities. For them, the attitude may be “‘give us the money and we’ll understand that you have limited time,’” Dr. Saltz said.

Susan Shapiro Barash, who teaches gender studies at Marymount Manhattan College in New York, said women with young children are looking for guidance from their mother or mother-in-law, but these days they are often looking in vain.

Thoroughly modern grandmothers “feel they’ve put in their time,” Ms. Barash said. “They were devoted to children to the exclusion of their own freedom, and they’re not looking to repeat the mothering process with their grandchildren.”

Before she had her first child, Emilia, three years ago, Catherine Connors said: “My mother put me on notice. She told me she was not interested in baby-sitting. She said she’d come to visit but that she didn’t like newborns.”

Judy Connors flew to Toronto from her home in British Columbia a week after her granddaughter’s birth. “It was clear she was bored,” her daughter said. “There was a lot of sitting in the living room while I struggled to figure out how to nurse. She said, ‘I don’t know why you don’t just give her a bottle,’ and then repaired to the veranda for a cigarette.”

The elder Ms. Connors, the retired director of a residential treatment program for adolescents, had a few words to say in her defense. “I raised two children whom I love dearly,” she said. “I was a stay-at-home mom. Then I discovered when I started my own career that there was a whole other world out there.”

There are many reasons grandparents may choose to minimize their roles. Some “may be nervous about handling your newborn, but don’t want to admit it,” said Susan Newman, a psychologist. “They may not feel comfortable driving your precious cargo to a practice or a lesson.”

Or they may have other priorities. “A lot of these women are widows or divorcees and may be dating and want to put their romantic lives ahead of their grandchildren,” said Ms. Barash, the gender studies teacher.

Judy Connors said her hands-off behavior “doesn’t equate to not loving my grandchildren - it just means I have a life that doesn’t revolve around them.”