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My now 3-year old grandson's mother left the family home when he was 18 months old and has visited him at his home for a couple hours about every 6 weeks or so. She doesn't show much interest in the child and rarely plays or talks to him. He lives with his father and they have a great relationship, a nice clean home, stability, love and caring.
Recently, the 3 year old has been learning nursey rhymes about mommy and daddy and baby brother, mother bear etc. Do you think he misses his mother?
A child growing up with a parent less always has issues missing the parent in question. This would most likely surface in situations like you mentioned with the nursery rhymes. It's not that they miss the person in question but they feel different/left out due to something being missing from their lives.
Unless your son finds a new girlfriend/wife this won't go away completely but the issue can be mitigated by a female roll model like an aunt, grandmother or just a friend of the father.
But a couple of hours a week can create an attachment. I got 4 young cousins (2,4,4,7) that I often babysit on. Usually only 4/5 hours a week tops, but a while ago I wasn't there for about a month and they started crying all day asking my aunt when I would come and visit again. So yea he could be missing her, but at this age he would eventually grow out of it but he would still need a good female role model in his life.
