In 2001, four out of the five Academy Award nominations for best actress went to women who played the role of a lone mother, Juliette Binoche for Chocolat (Lasse Hallsttrom: 2000) Julia Roberts for Erin Brockovich (Steven Soderbergh: 2000), Laura Linney for You Can Count on Me (Kenneth Lonnergan: 2000) and Ellen Burstyn for Requiem for A Dream (Darren Aronofsky: 2000). The fact that these four films each prioritized a narrative of lone motherhood became a point of interest for cultural observers who saw the popularization of lone mother narratives as indicative of mainstream cinema’s policy of inclusion and diversity and reflective of a broader political acceptance of lone motherhood. And yet, despite the phenomenal political and cultural significance of the lone mother figure, little academic attention has been paid to the cultural prioritization of this oftentimes demonized female figure. This thesis offers a critical account of the cultural investment in mainstream cinema’s lone mother figure to argue that she plays a crucial role in shoring up postfeminist, neoliberal and neo-conservative family values rhetoric in ways which highlight the exclusions on which postfeminism thrives.