Though numerous social workers try to step in, a co-dependent mother and son bounce from city to city, in search of a place where they can be together at all times.

One Mother's Day, two old women reflect on their relationships with their children--present and absent--and with the same adulterous man. When their paths cross at a crucial moment, one woman's refusal to accept the help of her husband's secret lover leads to her death.

Over dinner, an observer reflects on mothers and their omnipresent prevalence in children’s lives.

An overprotective mother attempts to get her teenage daughter to tell her why she is so upset. In an erratic and panicked conversation, the daughter reveals an unimaginable problem they must tackle together.

A mother, upon helping a girl at a playground one day, contemplates the nature of her marriage and the daughter who came from it.

A woman's complicated relationship to her mother is captured in three vignettes: one from directly after her death, one from when she is still alive, and one from years after she is gone.

When a mother takes her children to buy a puppy from another mother, she finds an unsettling household and a child chained like a dog in the backyard. Through their alternating narratives, both mothers reflect on what it means to love your children.

A blissfully naïve young couple hopes to avoid the fate of the husband's unhappy parents, but as his jealous mother, children, and resentments come between them, the young couple falls into the same pitfalls.

A working-class mother has held only one hope for her entire life: that one day, her daughter would marry well and wealthy, and take care of her in her old age. When her daughter reveals that the man she loves is not wealthy, her mother's dreams of rest are dashed and divided.

After finding out that her toddler has cancer, a fiction writer and her husband living in the American Midwest do everything they can to save their baby, including giving up her artistic integrity in order to pay for the medical bills.