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.

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.

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.

Around the holiday season, a mother takes her children and leaves her deadbeat husband to move into the mountains, all the while trying to find a good father figure for her kids.

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.

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.

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 being left behind by her husband and two sons due to her alleged "boringness," a woman must learn how to cope with her new life.

A young, African-Carib girl is raised by the woman who does her father's laundry after her mother dies in childbirth. Feeling a lack of love in her life, the girl seeks to understand her relationship with her distant father and dead mother.