single parent

single parent noun: a parent who is the only guardian of offspring.

Noun

single parent (plural single parents)

A parent who is the only guardian of offspring.
- For the majority of Shaylene’s upbringing, Darlene raised them as a single parent. She worked very hard to support the household, often times balancing three jobs to keep the household afloat.2026 August 6, Nicholas Muhoro, “An Ohio Teen Vanished During a One-Mile Drive in 1994. Her Locked Car Was Found Hours Later”, in Skip Boring, archived from the original on 06 Aug 2026
Synonyms:

sole provider

single parent (third-person singular simple present single parents, present participle single parenting, simple past and past participle single parented)

To act as the only guardian of offspring.
- My husband would, no doubt, be the slightest bit fatigued from having single-parented a precocious preschooler 24/7 for a week.2008, Deanna Davis, The Law of Attraction in Action, →ISBN, page 6
- My degrees and credentials are largely oriented to working with children and young adults in many different capacities. And I've single parented.2009, Samuel D. G. Heath, The American Poet: Weedpatch Gazette for 1997, →ISBN, page 286

Noun
plural	single parents
Verb
third-person singular present	single parents
present participle	single parenting
past participle	single parented
past	single parented

What does single parent mean?: Single parent means a parent who is the only guardian of offspring.
What part of speech is single parent?: Single parent can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of single parent?: The plural of single parent is single parents.

Adapted from Wiktionary: single parent (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “single parent.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/single_parent. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.