In elementary and early middle school, Marsophia Ducheine’s mom wasn’t very present. Her dad, grandmother and aunts were a part of the village that stepped in to support her. While they taught her how to take care of family, it was Clair Huxtable who showed Ducheine that she could grow up to have a demanding career and be a present parent.

“When they say it takes a village to raise a kid, Clair Huxtable was part of that village, even though she was this TV mom,” said Ducheine, who grew up watching reruns of “The Cosby Show” on Nick at Night.

For Ducheine, a Black woman, it was a transformative experience for her to watch a Black mom on TV who had a prestigious career because it showed her what she could become. Now in her 30s, she is a lawyer ― and a mother to a 7-year-old daughter, and Clair’s impact still resonates.

“Clair Huxtable inspires me to be present and loving even when you’re working and your head wants to explode,” Ducheine said.

Sometimes the way the onscreen portrayal of a mom shapes us is easy to identify. There can be a clear parallel between what we watched as a kid and what we wanted for ourselves, just like it was for Ducheine.

For me, that pathway existed in the relationship between Rory and Lorelai Gilmore. Growing up with divorced parents, I felt seen by the fast-talking mother-daughter pair who drink too much coffee and converse using an endless amount of cultural references. Their friendship normalized the atypical relationship that I had with my mom, and I knew that when I grew up I wanted to be the kind of mother who my daughter could trust and laugh with.

When my mom died 6 1/2 years ago, just four months after my daughter was born, the paradigm shifted, and suddenly, instead of having a Lorelai, I realized that I had become someone else’s. The future that I’d always envisioned for myself didn’t exist because I had imagined being Rory with a kid, not a Rory with a kid but without a mom.

“Gilmore Girls” gave me a framework to process my grief, but the show was no longer one of my most reliable comfort watches. Instead, the dynamic between Rory and Lorelai became a painful reminder of everything that I was missing. I needed a different maternal figure from that village of onscreen moms to fill the void.

Allison Lemm can relate. Her mom died from cancer when she was 35, a decade after “Steel Magnolias,” the now-classic movie about six women in Louisiana, was released. When she first saw the movie at 23, she loved the eccentric southern characters brought together by Truvy’s Beauty Spot.

When most people think about the dominant maternal figure in “Steel Magnolias,” they probably think of Sally Field as the iconic M’Lynn. Before her mom died, Lemm did, too. However, now what resonates with her is the women who support M’Lynn as her daughter, Shelby (Julia Roberts), struggles with the medical realities of her diabetes and, against her doctors’ and mother’s wishes, gets pregnant.

When she first saw the movie, Lemm didn’t understand how M’Lynn could watch her daughter put her life at risk, but now, in her 50s and with two daughters in their 20s, she understands the internal strength of M’Lynn. Being a strong mom is “support[ing] your child because you love them even if that’s not what you want.”

But who, especially for motherless mothers like Lemm and me, is going to support us? For Lemm, it comes back to that group of women at Truvy’s. Decades after seeing the movie for the first time, it’s the strength of those friendships that has shaped her. After her mom died, she found her own group of Steel Magnolias and realized that “friendship can be maternal and carry us through tragic events [like the loss] of a husband or child or an illness.”

Sometimes, that friendship can even come from characters. For me, I find it everywhere from the nuns of Nonnatus House in “Call the Midwife,” to the strength of characters like Dr. Miranda Bailey on “Grey’s Anatomy,” and I feel lucky to live in a time where there is a plethora of fierce, strong moms onscreen to guide us and to be our friends.

For Megan Trachman, it’s this strength that makes Tami Taylor (Connie Britton), the wife of football coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), stand out. Trachman, now in her 30s, didn’t watch the show when it originally aired; she binged it during law school.

“I really appreciate that she is a strong, female, independent character, and doesn’t compromise her role and doesn’t let being a mom or being a wife be her one sole label,” Trachman said.

As a mom to a 2-year-old son, Trachman appreciates that Tami doesn’t sacrifice her goals even though she’s a mom to her teen daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden) and toddler Gracie Belle (Madilyn Landry). Instead, she fights to pursue her career and not let her husband’s career overshadow hers.

Like Trachman, I loved “Friday Night Lights” and the progression of Tami from guidance counselor to principal to college dean. Her trajectory becomes one of the pivotal plots in the show’s final season because they have to decide if they are going to move to Philadelphia for Tami to become the dean of admissions at a private college or stay in Texas for Eric to coach football. Nothing about the decision is simple, but Tami explains it clearly: “It’s my turn, babe.”

I felt that storyline deeply in college when the final season originally aired, but it resonates even more as a mom with two children and a husband who is constantly struggling to balance the omnipresent needs of the other people in my household with my individual goals.

As a person who can’t turn to my mom for advice about work-life balance, I’m grateful that at least I still have Tami Taylor. This is also one of the gifts of the TV and movie moms that we grew up alongside. As our perspectives and circumstances shift, they have new wisdom to offer.

That was the experience for Lori Guyton. She first saw “Terms of Endearment” in theaters when she was in her 20s. At the time, she remembers that the complicated relationship between Aurora (Shirley MacLaine) and her daughter Emma (Debra Winger) had a big impact on her. Aurora isn’t a very likable character, and the movie isn’t one of those fun ones that you want to rewatch over and over during your life, but Guyton couldn’t let their dynamic go.

“It’s been a slow revelation about this movie and [Aurora’s] character,” Guyton said. But, over time, as she’s progressed through parenthood and raised two kids who are now in their 20s and 30s, she appreciates how complicated Aurora’s character is because motherhood is complicated.

Mothers, like all people, are imperfect.

“We do some things really well and then do some things not so well,” Guyton said. But, they still love their kids. It’s this juxtaposition between Aurora’s faults and her love that resonates with Guyton.

“Her love for her daughter is so deep and so complete,” she said. “But also what stands out about this character is her unconditional honesty. She’s brutally honest with her daughter, her son-in-law, and that honesty in the movie is at many times hard to watch.”

However, what’s stuck with Guyton over all these years isn’t Aurora refusing to attend her daughter’s wedding, but the way she screams at the nurses to get her dying daughter pain medicine. When Emma is dying, the bottom line is that her mom is there by her side supporting her.

Maybe at the end of the day that’s how these TV and movie moms influence our lives the most; they’re always present for it.

For Tommy Krutainis, 37, the presence of Fran Drescher in CBS’ “The Nanny” has been a comfort. In the show, Fran Fine isn’t a mom, but she takes on a maternal role after her boyfriend breaks up with her, and she unintentionally becomes the nanny to the three kids of Broadway producer Maxwell Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy).

The show premiered in 1993 when Krutainis was 5, and he watched it with his entire family every week for six seasons. As someone who grew up in a working-class, blue-collar household, the show spoke to him, and he admired the “real-world mothering that Fran instills in the kids because they come from affluence and she comes from Flushing, Queens.” He also viewed Fran and her mother’s relationship as a mirror of his relationship with his own mother because they can talk about anything and are extremely close.

Krutainis, who now works in TV and film, has rewatched the show twice with his husband in recent years, and it still holds up, partially because of the comedic timing and partially because of the universal themes in the storytelling.

“I think one of the reasons people watch these old sitcoms is a little bit like reconnecting with an old friend,” Krutainis said. Fran’s unconventional, zany form of mothering is still a comforting touchstone for him in this chaotic world.

I think it’s this constant presence that turns moms and maternal characters onscreen into surrogate mothers for us all. Maybe they’re mothering alongside our mothers or maybe they’re filling in empty spaces. Either way, it’s clear that these fictional people become part of our lifelong villages because of the impact they have on us.

Like a good mom, they inspire us like Clair or Tami, challenge us like Aurora, and comfort us like Fran and the Steel Magnolias. Over and over again, they remind us of the gifts that good storytelling can give us.

Mother’s Day is a chance to remember those maternal characters whose presence has made us who we are — either alongside or in the absence of our own mothers.