Whenever I think about a parent abandoning their child, the iconic scene from There Will Be Blood comes to mind. The young preacher Eli Sunday forces Daniel Plainview, the greasy oil baron who left his deaf son on a train to San Fransisco, to admit in front of the congregation that he abandoned his child. The iconic quote is, «I ABANDONED MY CHILD! I ABANDONED MY BOY!» This moment is super important in the story because it’s one of the few times Eli has power over Daniel, and Daniel is humiliatingly forced to admit he is not without fault. 

Some parents never get held accountable for abandoning their kids. It is an inherently shameful thing to do, and some bad parents don’t have the guts to admit that what they did was wrong and beg their kids for forgiveness. The mother in this story, who abandoned her son when he was 5 to pursue acting, is no different.