Royal biographer Ingrid Seward has claimed that Queen Elizabeth was "unable to enjoy" her time as a mother.
It has been reported in the past that the Queen did not form a particularly close relationship with her children when they were young because she took on the huge role of Queen when she was just 26 years old.
She was also part of a generation and class that routinely left the daily care of small children in the hands of household staff.
In past biographies, Charles has been quoted saying it was "inevitably the nursery staff" who taught him to play, witnessed his first steps, punished and rewarded him.
Queen Elizabeth II ascended to the throne at the age of 26
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Ingrid Seward has just released a royal biography, named My Mother and I, which is the inside story of the King and his late mother.
Speaking to GBN America she said: "This was a woman, the Queen, who as Princess Elizabeth had Charles literally a year after her marriage.
"She got married in '47, had Charles in '48, and by '52 she was Queen.
"She had very little time, just four years to enjoy motherhood. During that time because her father, King George the 6th, was ill, she and the Duke of Edinburgh were travelling a lot and representing the King on visits and all kinds of things, in a way perhaps similar to what Prince William is doing now with his father.
Queen Elizabeth didn't get to enjoy being a mother, according to Seward
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"But she wasn't able to enjoy motherhood in the way that perhaps we would like to think that we do today."
She later added: "The Queen was very proud of Charles and felt more able to express her love for him when she had a little bit more time to do so.
"You have to remember that in the 1950s, parents did not hug their children and coddled them in the way that we think is completely normal today.
She was "very proud" of her son
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"It wasn't just aristocratic families. It was most families.
"It just wasn't a lot of love you's and a lot of hugging and kissing. It just didn't happen."
She also added: "We learnt a lot when Jonathan Dimbleby wrote an authorized biography of Charles.
"He talked about how the fact that his mother had never hugged him and he had a very strained relationship with his father and that the love that he received was really from the royal nannies."