This movie deals with adoption and a mother's love through three intertwined stories.Annette Benning plays a woman who as a young girl gives her child up for adoption. Throughout her adult life, she is bitter, and unable to love and be loved. She meets Jimmy Smits and she slowly starts to melt and tries to find the daughter she has given up.Naomi Watts is a bitter, driven, self absorbed woman who is unable to form relationships too. She knows she was adopted and it is not until she is ready to have her own baby does she want to find the woman who gave her up. Samuel L. Jackson plays her boss and lover, and he gives a subtle, but strong performance. The last story deals with Kerry Washington who is unable to conceive with her husband and are in the midst of an adoption with a young girl. In the middle of all this, her husband decides he can't go through with it and basically she becomes a single mother.I thought the acting was excellent and you really felt the emotions of each character. I have seen the movie twice and cried twice. I can't recommend this movie enough especially if you are a mother. There is sadness, but the movie ends on a somewhat happy note as each woman accepts her past.

Mother and Child is a Crash type movie where unrelated characters of different races come together or become related by the end. The Watts character is the daughter given up years ago by the Benning character and they are seriously troubled because of it. Annette is a spinster who distrusts men and Watts is a psychopath who manipulates them. What develops is both meet kindly coworkers or neighbors that eventually melt their hearts and all ends happily. It is a well made film with great direction and acting if you are a true believer in humanism. The left sees people as troubled but good deep inside except for conservatives who are evil through and through. The right see people as troubled who act good (to maintain social order), may become better through suffering, but basically are fallen. My view is closer to the second.That distinction explains why this move is unrealistic. With so much unhappiness they wouldn't have waited 37 years. Second you can't melt the heats of troubled people. If you spend time around them you'll become troubled also.. The message I received was that promiscuity is dangerous and if you want to be a mother you wait until you are mature, find the right partner, then have children if it is affordable and wanted. Otherwise revert to adoption. Finally, everyone in this movie would have lawyered up which makes me ask why basically good people are so litigious all the time? Why don't they just sit around all day affecting others lovingly and forget about working in law, social services, or whatever? Too many contradictions in that belief and feelings seldom make sense. Suffering follows close behind.

A surprisingly good film with a lot of unpredictable confrontations between diverse characters. It has a great script and a story-line that amply keeps us in thrall as to the eventual outcome. The end is filled with a good mix of tragedy but also reconciliation. It's one of those movies where the separate strands of people's lives are separately viewed until all the pieces come togetherThe basic theme is on teenage pregnancy and adoption - with the scars that it leaves on all involved. But there are other various themes as well that contribute to the overall impact this movie has on us. The central character is well played by Annette Bening who undergoes a credible transition as a misanthropic middle aged woman to a more caring and giving person. So life's passages and changes are also a part of this film which lasts a little over two hours but is well worth the watch. Perhaps, at times, it becomes a bit too much like a soap opera, but the strength of the script lifts it above this.

I thought at the outset this was going to be a good movie. As a mother with two children of my own, one child from India and an open adoption of three children from Mexico I found this movie contrived and unbelievable so they lost me early on. I thought the men who loved these unpleasant women were a bit hard to swallow, the pleasant husband who suddenly wanted his own kid was equally unbelievable. Not that men could not like difficult woman but there really has to be something that compensates for this, which renders the woman appealing in some way, if only in that they desire S& M. Men who like their wives who have good wives and no personality themselves do not leave them because they are wanting a child of their own, suddenly developing a back bone.The movie turned into a life time channel movie and in the end I just did not care.Women do not die in childbirth, their kids do not live down the street from Grandma who has suddenly become nice, hysterical mothers do not become good mothers. One or two conceits are OK but short of some good performances don't waste your time. I don't know how the writer managed to get his script through without editing.