A particular (e.g., Asian cinema vs. Western literature)

In contemporary cinema, filmmakers have moved away from villainizing mothers, choosing instead to examine the grueling, nuanced realities of maternal love under pressure.

In literature, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead offers a different model. The narrator, an aging pastor, writes letters to his young son. The mother is nearly absent, but the longing for the mother—for her grace, her survival—becomes the book’s emotional core. The son is loved without suffocation. It is a portrait of what the relationship could be: a launchpad, not a cage.

Contemporary literature has continued to produce rich, psychologically nuanced portraits of mother–son relationships. Adam Haslett’s 2025 novel Mothers and Sons is “no less psychologically acute in its explorations of how we both love and harm those who are closest to us, sometimes simultaneously”. The novel centres on Peter, a lawyer in New York, and his mother Ann, a pastor who left Peter’s father for a woman years earlier, creating a rift that has never fully healed. “Together, these stories show how richly complicated relationships can be,” with Haslett’s “ingenious structure of braiding together different times and different perspectives” creating genuine dramatic tension.

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The intensity of the mother-son bond is frequently magnified by the absence of a paternal figure. Whether through death, divorce, or emotional withdrawal, the missing father creates a vacuum. The son is often forced to become the "man of the house" prematurely, blurring the lines of responsibility and emotional support, as seen in Sons and Lovers or the classic coming-of-age film What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993). Unconditional Love vs. Destructive Enabling