He was a good father and gentleman and did want the girls. It was utterly baffling why the mother would leave a safe and loving middle-class home in a small town and drag off her two teen girls to a seedy apartment building in a run-down area of Indianapolis. I found Bonnie Franklin’s character to be selfish and childish, your typical ‘60s/’70s women’s libber. If she wanted to live “for herself”, she should’ve stayed in the marriage just 2-3 more years until the youngest was off to college and then moved out, or just left by herself.
The whole premise for the show should’ve been altered considerably. Made the husband abusive or a cheater (he was neither), or made her a widow, but discovered that he had pissed away the family’s savings, forcing her to move away. That would’ve made the situation more believable and sympathetic.
I think of my cousin, now while her parents didn’t divorce, when she was about the age of Valerie Bertinelli’s Barbara at the beginning of the show (14-15), her parents uprooted her from her home in South Carolina where her friends and life were and moved to a small town in Mississippi. She was utterly miserable and depressed, and it had a negative impact on her relationship with her parents, especially her mother. She didn’t have a sister to turn to, just two brothers, which didn’t help matters.
Maybe she was a whore who wanted to have sex with a bunch of scumbags.