Best movies like Missing Children: A Mother's Story

Marian Lorimer is a young affectionate woman whose husband Richard does not appreciate her. When his philandering causes her to fall in love with someone else, she leaves him a note telling him that she is running off with the man. At the last moment, thinking of her young daughter, she changes her mind, but Richard refuses to take her back and divorces her, gaining custody of their child. Marian goes West and changes her name to Mrs. Hatch, but years later returns when she sees her daughter's picture in the paper in a marriage announcement. She poses as a dressmaker to see her daughter but when she is revealed as Marian by Richard and his new wife, she is forced to leave. In the end, however, Marian and her child are reunited and Richard and his new wife finally are humbled. -From TCM.com Database, powered by the AFI.

Seven British children bury their mother and hide her death, until their long-lost father returns.

The mother of a large family is abandoned by her children and faces consignment to the poorhouse. But one of her offspring, the one no one had faith in, returns to rescue her.

Inspired by true events, the Lifetime Original Movie, Baby Sellers, exposes the shocking international criminal enterprise of infant trafficking. Stars Emmy winner Jennifer Finnigan and Emmy and Golden Globe winner Kirstie Alley.

Edna marries Texan Sam Gladney, operator of a wheat mill. They have a son, who is killed when very young. Edna discovers by chance how the law treats children who are without parents and decides to do something about it. She opens a home for foundlings and orphans and begins to place children in good homes, despite the opposition of "conservative" citizens, who would condemn illegitimate children for being born out of wedlock. Eventually Edna leads a fight in the Texas legislature to remove the stigma of illegitimacy from birth records in that state, while continuing to be an advocate for homeless children.

The journey of a young African American girl who navigated over 30 foster homes and psychiatric facilities before age 18, and the one woman, Jeanne, who believed in her. After Jeanne’s unsuccessful attempt to adopt Regina due to a racially motivated ruling, their bond is forced apart.

A young mother suffers her worst nightmare -the drowning of her young daughter. Two years later, Jamie gives birth to another girl. After a series of suspicious accidents, Jamie becomes haunted by fears that her dead daughter's vengeful spirit has returned in her new baby. Is she right, or is guilt over her daughter's death pushing her sanity over the edge? Written by Anonymous

Amanda and Jason are happy marriage now, after years of frustration have finally managed to take a beautiful girl from a country in Eastern Europe through an international adoption agency. But when the doctor will perform a DNA test to small, finds that there have been irregularities in the adoption process.

A nanny is hired by a troubled mother and finds herself fighting to hold together the entire family when she realizes the woman has an imaginary daughter.

Belle Bennett plays as the widowed mother of seven children living in Sioux City, Iowa. She moves with them to Cambridge, Massachusetts in order to educate her children with culture and give them every advantage. Bennett, who is unversed in financial matters, soon faces poverty for herself and her children. She takes out a loan from an unscrupulous lender (played by Richard Tucker), who is so impressed by the charm and valiant spirit of Bennett than he neglects to ask her for collateral. Bennett, however, is only able to partially pay her creditors. Marion Nixon, Bennett's eldest daughter, is shocked by her mother's actions and attempts to sacrifice herself to Tucker in order to clear her mother's obligations, even though she is engaged to marry a well to do Harvard undergraduate, played by Rex Bell. This film is believed lost.

Four friends search for love and happiness while working at a California sandwich shop.

A young woman’s quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tortured her as a child leads her and her best friend, also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity.

When one’s sole focus is to provide for their children, the stakes are extremely high. The need for multiple jobs to make ends meet has become a common reality for many families in this country, which leads to a very important question: who looks after the children while their parents work? Through the Night examines the economic and emotional toll affecting some American families, told through the lens of a 24-hour daycare center in Westchester, New York. At the center of it all is Nunu, the primary caregiver and a hero to many families in need of a safe space to bring their children.

Matt Ballot has returned home after 12 years of hard-drinking in all 48 states. His wife has managed to raise their 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son nicely without his help. Matt is considered a disgrace to the town he came from and now he finds himself trying to win the love of his children, his wife, and the respect of the townspeople. Set in Arkansas in the 1920s.

After directing him as the title character in Huckleberry Finn, William Desmond Taylor again used boy actor Lewis Sargent in this picture. His character, known merely as "the boy," has been raised in an orphanage where he has caused as much trouble as possible. He finally can't stand living there anymore and runs away. On the streets he finds a friend in Mike (Ernest Butterworth), a newsboy. Mike teaches him how to survive but inevitably the boy gets hauled into court. However, the judge sees potential in him and hands him over to be adopted by a young politician. The judge, incidentally, is played by Judge Ben Lindsey, who was famous in his day for his efforts to give delinquent boys a decent chance in life.

Steve Tuttle, the titular lazybones, takes on the responsibility of raising a fatherless girl, causing a scandal in his small town. Many years later, having returned from World War I, he discovers that he loves the grown-up girl.

In the late 1970s, when a mentally handicapped teenager is abandoned, a gay couple takes him in and becomes the family he's never had. But once the unconventional living arrangement is discovered by authorities, the men must fight the legal system to adopt the child.

Through interviews with both victims and instigators, Nanfu Wang, a first-time mother, breaks open decades of silence on a vast, unprecedented social experiment that shaped — and destroyed — countless lives in China.

Martha and Jed Richards live in Oregon in 1862. They and their two daughters moved there to make a new life, but the daughters died of cholera along the way. This has left Martha an emotional wreck, and she is unable to move on with her life. That is until an orphan named Danny comes to live with them. Jed immediately accepts Danny as his son, but Martha is still too upset to be able to love him. As time passes, however, she finds herself more and more able to accept him as part of the family.

In 1975, as the Vietnam War was ending, thousands of orphans and Amerasian children were brought to the United States as part of "Operation Babylift." Daughter from Danang tells the dramatic story of one of these children, Heidi Bub (a.k.a. Mai Thi Hiep), and her Vietnamese mother, Mai Thi Kim, separated at the war's end and reunited 22 years later. Heidi, now living in Tennessee - a married woman with kids - had always dreamt of a joyful reunion. When she ventures to Vietnam to meet her mother, she unknowingly embarks on an emotional pilgrimage that spans decades and distance. Unlike most reunion stories that climax with a cliché happy ending, Daughter from Danang is a real-life drama. Journeying from the Vietnam War to Pulaski, Tennessee and back to Vietnam, Daughter from Danang tensely unfolds as cultural differences and the years of separation take their toll in a riveting film about longing and the personal legacy of war.

My Flesh and Blood is a 2003 documentary film by Jonathan Karsh chronicling a year in the life of the Tom family. The Tom family is notable as the mother, Susan, adopted eleven children, most of whom had serious disabilities or diseases. The film itself is notable for handling the sensitive subject matter in an unsentimental way that is more uplifting than one might expect.

Nora Mason becomes entangled in a family mix-up of murder and scandal that threatens to ruin her career and entire future; Unless the mother she does not know can find a way to save her.

A precocious youngster's visions of a mysterious woman and a series of child murders leads her mom to seek help from the authorities.

Missie three years later: being a single mother after her husband Willie was shot during a poker scuffle. She and Maddy move back in with her parents Clark and Marty. She finds a new home, and finds a new teaching position that she settles right into, but Missie has lost all faith in herself, until a chance encounter at her father's church where she adopts homeless orphan Belinda Marshall.

Succesful business woman gives up her career and raises the son of her deceased sister. His natural father who was unaware of his son's existence finds this out after eight years. Prompted by a wise judge, they decide to enter into a marriage of convenience in order to not upset the child. Soon after (with a little help of the boy) they fall in love...

Desperate for a child, a couple welcome a surrogate mother into their lives, only to discover she's a con artist who's out to steal their money.

A 1940s Tennesee welfare worker learns that Georgia Tann, the charismatic head of a local adoption agency, is actually running a black-market baby ring behind the Tennesee Childrens Home Society.

Amy Winslow wants to go to art college but can't get her financial aid approved. A help wanted ad leads to a couple that will let her move into their quiet guest home rent free, a dream come true except that Joan wants Amy to be a surrogate mother for her next child. Little does Amy know the dark sinister reasons behind her desire, the scandalous death of Joan's first infant child and the fear she might hurt her next baby. The baby is adopted before Amy wakes up in the hospital, leading to a dangerous confrontation to claim the child finally for her own.

The sweeping story of Dalva Northridge, a young woman of part-Sioux heritage from an old, landed family on the Nebraska plains, and of her lifelong yearning for the man she loved and the son she gave up.

A couple mutually decide to give their baby up for adoption to go back to living their separate lives.

One year after her husband has passed away, Joanna Burke (Sherilyn Fenn) is plagued by reoccuring nightmares about her daughter Emma.after risking her life to prevent a horrendous accident, Joanna wakes up in the hospital and finds herself in a bizarre parallel world that holds little resemblance to her previous reality. Suddenly, her name is Sarah Randolph, she has a sister Penny ( Rena Sofer), her old friends have vanished and no longer recognize her, and, most shockingly, she no longer has a daughter. Enlisting the help of her smitten doctor (Thomas Gibson), Joanna searches for Emma and for traces of her old life, but she is haunted both by her memories of Emma and by the creeping suspicion that her new identity has a dangerous secret to hide.. Joanna will have to find a way out of this alternative world before someone in it finds out Sarah's disturbing past.

Jane (Bernadette Peters) has a dizzy spell while at home. As her condition does not improve, she consults a doctor who finds that she is very ill and that she has no family to help her through this very trying time. He enlists the help of a therapist (Mary Tyler Moore) who is very hesitant to become involved in this case due to the loss she suffered as a young child. As her condition deteriorates, Jane learns how to come to terms with her past as does her therapist.

After graduating from a fashionable finishing school and touring Europe with her father, Selina Peake returns to the United States, where her father is accidentally killed after losing his fortune in a gambling den. Selina is reduced to teaching in a high school in the Dutch community at High Prarie near Chicago. She boards in the farmhouse of Klass Poole, a dull-witted market gardener, and finally marries Pervus DeJong, a poor and backward farmer. She shares the drudgery of her husband's futile life and finds happiness only in their small son, Dirk, whom she calls "So-Big."

Michael returns home to Chicago from Operation Iraqi Freedom with more scars than he left with. Abused by his father, Roman, as a child, he spent his teenage years as a petty thief until he is caught and given an ultimatum, military or jail. Now, that his bloody Tour of Duty is over, he returns home to find his mother, Teresa, dead by her own hand, pushed to the brink by her abusive husband Roman. Michael vows to take vengeance for his poor mother by killing Roman. But he must have one last day with his girlfriend, Rose, a recent high school graduate who stayed loyal to Michael during his tour. But this happy reunion of young lovers takes a turn for the worst when Michael begins to show abusive behaviors toward Rose, not unlike his father's behaviors as a child. Michael must choose to let his past go and leave his father to rot in his own hell of self torture, or join him by his side.

A social worker tries to break up a ring of crooks who buy newborn babies from teenaged mothers and sell them to couples who can't obtain them through legal adoption channels.