The film "I Am Sam" is a fantastic film about a single father's struggle to keep his daughter, Lucy, because of his mental sufferings. Sam Dawson is a man with the mental age of a seven year old living in Los Angeles as a Starbucks employee. Sam is single-handedly raising his daughter and somewhat struggles with it as Lucy reaches the age of seven. Sam fathered Lucy from a homeless woman who wanted absolutely nothing to do with Lucy and Sam as soon as she was born and took off the day of her birth. Although Sam provides nothing but a loving and caring environment for Lucy, she soon surpasses her father's mental capacity which begins to cause problems. Lucy is aware of her fathers mental problem and chooses to pretend to not be any smarter than he is because she knows her father is "different". This begins to affect Lucy immensely in school and questions begin to arise about Sam's ability to care for Lucy and a custody case is brought to court. Sam's friends recommend that he hires Rita Harrison, a lawyer, which Sam decides to go through with. Rita works with Sam to help him keep his parental rights and in the midst of this they form a friendship where Sam also helps Rita with her family life. Sam is continuously fighting for the custody of his child as well as attends multiple trials while Lucy is in foster care. Furthermore, the foster parents decide to let Sam have custody of his daughter, yet Sam believes that Lucy still needs a mother figure and allows her to continue to help raise Lucy. .
Throughout the duration of the film "I am Sam" parenting roles and interactions with children, how children change relationships, and parent-child relationships play a huge role. .
Children tend to put a burden on parent-child relationships which usually can end in parents splitting up due to children stress amounts. Unfortunately, this is shown when Lucy's mother decided to walk right out on Lucy when she was just born instead of actually taking care and being there for her own daughter.
