:salam2:
My mum was a single parent...she was rarely around when I was a child, as she often worked up to 3 jobs at a time, at many times being absent throughout the day as well as during the nights and the weekends. There were no lasting adverse effects of this, nor of me not having both parents present. Myself and my two siblings are all normal, well-adjusted, hardworking adults who harbour no bitterness whatsoever towards the fact that our mother worked all throughout our childhood. In fact I'm immensely proud of my mother, she got up and provided for us and in doing so, she put our absent father to shame, who was unwilling to give us even a single penny.
In fact, I think it's probably one of the reasons that we turned out so well. Myself and my sister are highly educated, wheras my brother isn't very academic, but works as hard in his job as God can possibly will him to.
In an ideal world, our mum would have been present, and our 'father' would have been out at work providing for us. But this wasn't the case. As a result, we learned just how amazing a single mother can be, who is almost always a mother, father, worker, carer, teacher and nurturer all rolled into one. We learned the value of money, the importance of hard work, and how to truly cherish those precious moments we did have with our mother.
Alhamdulillah, my mother no longer has to work. Her children are grown and she is re-married into relative wealth, yet she still continues to work (and study for degree and post-grad), as she loves what she does. She works with homeless people and drug addicts, etc. and truly makes a difference in helping people turn their lives around. I salute that.
Those who have both parents and who have a family in which one parent (preferably the mother) can stay at home are truly lucky, and shouldn't become spoilt by the affection and money afforded to them, and should never take either of their parents' presence for granted, because only Allah knows what's in store for them.
I don't see a problem with working mothers, even if they don't have to, financially speaking. The problem is when the mother (no matter how rich or poor, no matter how good or bad her career) devotes her life only to her career, and has no time for her family when she returns home, etc. Equally, a working father should never value his career over his family, or be too tired, stressed or unwilling to pay attention to his wife and children at the end of his shift.
