A mother struggles to provide her daughter with comfort in an unstable home as her husband constantly searches for new employment.

A single mother living in the Bay Area is attempting to successfully raise three children, but finds trouble optimizing both their freedom and their safety.

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 Filipina nanny working for a white family in the United States saves coins with the child to take him to visit her home in the Philippines. When the bank rejects their painstakingly-collected pennies, she teaches him a lesson about anger and optimism.

A ranching family stays optimistic during tough times by remembers their good luck last summer when they persuaded a generous rancher to work on his farm.

A woman leaves her island home to serve at a créche on the mainland in a poor area of the city. There, she falls in love with one of the children she cares for and wants him as her own, but his mother commits a crime that puts the boy out of reach.

After their mother leaves a preteen and her siblings, the preteen must navigate her emerging adolescence by herself in an orphanage.

A young boy tries to help his parents make money by selling ice cream at his mother's work at a Snow White Laundry. An accident with one of the machines causes chaos and the narrator is forced to leave.

A married couple tries to make ends meet for their hungry and sick children in the midst of the Depression but soon realize that sheer willpower cannot save them from the ruthless winter.

When child protective services shows up on her doorstep with a stepson she's never met, a woman hauls the kid to her childhood home in Idaho. She finds work as a fire lookout and grows attached to the child, who is put in danger by natural disaster.