Just in time for Mother's Day, we bring you Marjorie Rosen's "Movies, Mommies, and the American Dream," originally published in the January/February 1976 issue of American Film™. Rosen, author of the pioneering 1973 book, "Popcorn Venus," was writing at the height of the Women's Liberation Movement, the so-called Second Wave of feminism in which sexuality, and reproductive and workplace rights played a central role.

While the narrow images of motherhood and child-rearing she describes have become more varied in the past 36 years, as witnessed in such films as MOMMIE DEAREST (1981), MR. MOM (1983), TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983), ALIENS (1986) and the British import VERA DRAKE (2004), it comes as somewhat of a shock to read about early film portrayals of Planned Parenthood, contraception and abortion-concepts still being debated today. Share this one with mom on May 13.