"Far from home, the children wait for the absent mother," they sang gently through the fence toward the soldiers.

Some families have become single-parent households, with a mother or father absent out of necessity.

She has filled the gap with friends, many of whom, she notes with interest, have absent mothers too.

The writer's children lead fairy-tale lives in one respect: they have a generally absent mother.

And there is the weak and absent mother, who at the crucial moment goes off to join the war effort.

Does it have to do, as the catalog for the drawing show suggests, with an absent mother?

Much was now explained, the self-absorbed father, the absent mother, the long days of the school holiday.

This proposal will guarantee American children don't suffer unnecessarily because of an absent mother or father.

The idealization of the absent mother by the children may create tremendous stress.

She had a theory of why Eloise's absent mother has no trouble leaving the two of them alone.