The Eternal Mother is a surviving 1917 American silent drama film directed by Frank Reicher and stars Ethel Barrymore.

The picture is taken from a novel, Red Horse Hill, by Sidney McCall, an alias for Mary McNeill Fenollosa.

[1] As described in a film magazine,[2] Maris (Barrymore) endeavors to persuade her husband Dwight Alden (Mills) to replace the children working in his mills with men and women, but Alden does not listen to his wife's pleas.

One night a little girl is injured and Maris, calling on her, discovers that she is her own daughter from a previous marriage who she thought was dead.

Alden learns that Maris' former husband secured a divorce so that he might marry another woman.