Many years ago, when my son was two years away from his school-leaving exam, my husband was transferred. He was doing very well in his work and extra-curricular activities. The dilemma that faced us then was whether we should accompany my husband on his transfer, or whether I should stay on with my son till he had finished school. Eventually, my husband and I felt that the family should be together and we moved. It was a hard decision to make, and one that cost us several sleepless nights. It certainly meant that our son had a very tough time coping. From being in line for the school captainship, he suddenly found himself a new boy, faced with having to gain acceptance. He also had to struggle to make his mark academically.

I still do not know whether we made the right decision or not. Today my son appears to be to be no worse off than those of his friends who escaped a fractured schooling. But whether or not he would have done better with a single parent at a critical point in his life is still a moot point.

Today the agonies of indecision that we went through are no longer the norm. Single parenthood, out of considered choice, is no longer rare. Increasingly, as husbands work in one city while their wives work in another, the children are brought up by one parent or the other, usually the mother. And there are cogent reasons for this. First on the list is schooling. Apart from the undesirability of a disrupted education, there is the matter of the availability of good schools where, say, the husband is posted. Added to this is the fact that many women now, either for reasons of finance or self-fulfilment feel the need to have a job themselves.

And how does such an arrangement work? Extremely well, says one single-mother-out-of-choice, whose husband works in Bhubaneswar. He returns every weekend, the children go to their father every school holiday, and the parents spend their respective annual holidays as a family. “This works out to quite a lot of time together. And the benefits are enormous. The children don’t feel deprived of their father, their education proceeds at an even keel, and I have the satisfaction of being able to work.” explained this mother.

Is there a fly in the ointment? The one irritation that these single mothers’ experience is when their husbands come home and take it upon themselves to make decisions. Since for most of the year they are the ones who run the show, they resent what they think is their husbands’ interference in an area that is no longer their business! In fact, if a programme I recently saw on television is to be believed, regarding women whose husbands work in Dubai, it is a factor that is causing their marriages to flounder!