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.

A boy looks back on the encounters he and his friend had with a troubled, violent classmate who murdered his own father.

In inner-city 1980s Boston, a middle-school boy must care for himself and his baby half-brother when their mother runs away to Texas.

A son tells a series of stories, most of them about his father and stepfather. As the son describes a robbery that took place at his house in high school and his experiences with his father, a former Jehovah's Witness and current alcoholic, he begins to recall details from his childhood.

In an attempt to impress his emotionally distant father, a boy ridicules his mother, who has loved him unconditionally even in his father's absence. Wracked with guilt, he yearns for her forgiveness - only to find that she does not hold it against him.

Forced to move to a new house, a family struggles to make the best of their situation, but then an accusation of theft turns father against son. In the aftermath, the father hopes it is not too late to salvage his relationship with the son.

The children in a family grow tired of hosting their middle-aged cousin, but his expulsion brings unexpected strife to the family.

A bitter divorcee and distant father having an affair with a younger, married woman gets a call that his son has gotten into trouble at boarding school. He travels to the school, where the headmaster says his son, who beat up another student, must transfer. In a series of events that makes him increasingly bitter, he ends up making his son's girlfriend cry in a restaurant.

A 5-year-old boy with a unique way of seeing the world feels alienated from his mother and tells her that he does not need her anymore. This viewpoint later causes him to lash out at his family, leading him to reflect on himself and his life.

On a visit to his old family farm in the Great Plains, a man recalls his tumultuous relationship with his now-deceased brother. In the process, he must reckon with the continued influence of familial trauma and confront his own ambiguous role in his brother's death.