The irony of this is, “single mother” aims no offense at anyone, and you’re advocating for an objectively offensive term take its place.

Let’s go over what constitutes a “child of an absentee father”:

• dead father
• deported father
• incarcerated father
• abused father

And that’s just the generalized ones.

Gee, I wonder why we simply use “single parent/mother/father”… maybe because it describes the situation most succinctly, and with as little offensiveness as possible? Couldn’t be! It must be the patriarchy!