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 kicking her husband out and changing the locks, a mother imagines he is still living with her, distant and uninterested in sex. Lying in bed, she conjures up old memories and imagines new ones, grappling with questions of selfhood, identity, womanhood, and motherhood. One night, her real husband returns, and she lets him back in.

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.

Amongst problems with her ungrateful children and ex-husband, a middle-aged mother deals with a burgeoning mid-life crisis — until she realizes that she has become miraculously pregnant.

After having an affair with a married man, a woman divorces her old husband and remarries, but she struggles to keep up with the compounded responsibilities of mother- and step-motherhood.

After a tumultuous and difficult upbringing, a woman contemplates whether or not she should give up her newborn child for adoption.

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.

A young mother mourns the death of her firstborn child, a son, three days after his birth and falls into a bout of depression.

A woman harbors a secret desire to have a baby in a future world where childbirth is extremely rare and discouraged.

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.