I have heard it said that becoming a parent is not for the faint of heart. After being one for almost seventeen years I can say that it is 100% true. There are so many highs and lows-for yourself as a woman, for each of your children, your spouse, and others around you.
Becoming a mother isn't always a picture perfect experience. Some women face the challenges of divorce, widowhood, neglectful fathers to their children, illness, disability, racism, financial worries, wars, and violence. As beautiful as motherhood can be, it can also be complicated by forces not under a mother's control. So what does a mother do?
A good mother does the best she can with the circumstances given to her. A good mother struggles so that she can provide better for her child. A good mother always tries to keep their child safe. Sometimes those basic gifts a mother tries to bestow to a child is made almost impossible because of the circumstances of their surroundings.
It isn't easy being a women in this world-then or now. These films tell stories about mothers who are doing the very best they can with what they have. They make decisions and sacrifices in the hope that their child could have a better life for them. From Lucille Ball playing Helen Beardsley in Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) who tries to navigate a blended family of twenty children to Barbara Stanwyck, playing Stella Martin in Stella Dallas (1937) who alienates her daughter in hopes that she would have a better life with her father who is a man of privilege.
Some of these films might make you cry, make you laugh, or enrage you-but they are stories about motherhood that can most definitely inspire you. All of the mothers in these films really do their best by their children. Sometimes their best is good enough and sadly sometimes it is not.
Here are 12 classic films that you can watch for Mother's Day:
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)
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