No you don't. As a single parent you don't have time, and kids don't appreciate and in fact often don't like elaborate or gourmet food.
Learn to make half-a-dozen simple dishes from memory. Pasta with meat sauce. Simple dishes with chicken, pork, fish, or beef, and vegetables. Stuff you can throw together with basic staple ingredients, minimal prep work, and minimal utensils. This makes shopping easier and minimizes time to prepare meals.
Avoid kitchen gadgets. They are just an extra thing to clean and you'll rarely use them. Have a few good knives, a couple of cutting/prep boards, and a basic set of pots and pans and utensils and stick to recipies that work with that.
May I nominate one exception: a pressure cooker. This includes plug-in electric like the Breville Fast Slow Cooker. If you are able to chop carrots, you can make endless variety of stews, casseroles, soups and curries with straightforward recipes, minimal complexity, short cook times and not too much cleaning up afterwards. And they're the sort of dishes that make great leftovers.
Learn to make half-a-dozen simple dishes from memory. Pasta with meat sauce. Simple dishes with chicken, pork, fish, or beef, and vegetables. Stuff you can throw together with basic staple ingredients, minimal prep work, and minimal utensils. This makes shopping easier and minimizes time to prepare meals.
Avoid kitchen gadgets. They are just an extra thing to clean and you'll rarely use them. Have a few good knives, a couple of cutting/prep boards, and a basic set of pots and pans and utensils and stick to recipies that work with that.