Former prostitute Mamma Roma strives to build a middle-class existence and provide her son with a respectable life. She moves to a better neighbourhood, re-unites with her son Ettore, and opens a vegetable stand. But the 16-year-old boy falls in with a gang of young criminals from the housing estate, and starts a relationship with an older neighbour. All his mother’s attempts to turn the delinquent into an industrious young man fail. When Mamma Roma’s former pimp turns up and blackmails her, she is forced to return to peddling her body on the streets