Mom, Spare Me!

In the early 1980s, college students Xu Li and Han Fangfei, along with teacher-training student Chi Yue, leave campus and enter society, facing immense pressures from romance, marriage, raising children, and work. Their different worldviews lead them to choose different ways of educating their children, with very different results. Xu Li's son, Chen Shang, is ambitious and excels in his studies. Family problems take a toll on Han Fangfei's daughter, who grows to resent her mother at a young age. Chi Yue is a workaholic who puts the greater good before her own family. Her students succeed, but her own child pays the price.