Life is never what we think it should be. The Cardinal Law with movies is that children don't die. In real life, ugly things happen and children get caught in the middle.
My son went missing when he was two, but I thought I was being a "good mother" by working to support him. He was found within eight hours, but he had been abused; I quit my job because I couldn't handle the fact that I had gone to work in order to seem "caring".
"Welfare Mother" suddenly lost its stigma...