Some say that behind every great man is a great woman. In the case of these billionaires, it was actually a great mother who helped them defy the odds to join the three-comma club.

At least 25 self-made billionaires were raised primarily by a single mom before going on to build businesses such as Home Depot, WhatsApp and Patron tequila. Their mothers, some of whom escaped abusive husbands or were widowed at a young age, often worked multiple jobs, facing economic uncertainty as they gave up their own dreams to put their kids first. Meanwhile two of the most famous self-made women billionaires on the planet got their starts as single moms: Diane Hendricks, who got pregnant as a teen, divorced her baby’s father young and went on to support her son by becoming a Playboy Bunny and working in real estate before remarrying, while single mom JK Rowling was on welfare when she wrote the Harry Potter series.

After his father walked out on the family, Jay-Z’s mother, Gloria Carter, worked for the city of New York and as a security guard to bring up the rap legend in Brooklyn’s Marcy projects. “We were living in a tough situation, but my mother managed; she juggled,” Jay-Z once recalled. Calendly founder Tope Awotona was also raised by a single mom after he witnessed his father get shot and killed in a carjacking in their home country of Nigeria. She moved her family halfway across the world to the United States shortly after.

Two of the world’s five richest people hail from single mothers: Elon Musk, whose mom balanced five jobs after immigrating to Canada with her children, and Jeff Bezos, whose mother gave birth at 17 years old and took night school classes while working at a bank before meeting Miguel Bezos, who became the Amazon billionaire’s stepfather. (A third member of the top five, Larry Ellison, contracted pneumonia at nine months old, prompting his overwhelmed teenage mother to give him up to relatives; he didn’t meet her again until he was 48.)

Among the billionaire “supermoms” is Dede Barnard, who raised fintech mogul Hayes Barnard in St. Louis, Missouri, as a single parent after divorcing Barnard’s alcoholic father. Dede, the daughter of a legendary high school football coach, simultaneously worked three jobs to keep her family afloat. She drove a Subaru 60,000 miles each year selling lawbooks for Commerce Clearing House while substitute teaching and grinding through night shifts at T.J. Maxx.

“That third job almost broke her,” says Barnard, who often spent his days alone as an only child, playing with Legos........

© Forbes