Look, I am not a mother and for various reasons it will never be in the cards for me. So I have no problem with Ginny for wanting to be able to live her life as she pleases, lolling about on the ugly as sin Romano couch and being a cocktail waitress. Different Strokes Different Folks.

However. She has a child who senses that she does not want to be a mother and instead of going to therapy with her and trying to find common ground, she along with Ann's blessings thinks its perfectly fine to have Frank do all the parenting except for one day a week.

Meanwhile the child she raised for the first 10 years has to live with the fact that her mother doesn't want to be around her and thus she pulls away from her whenever she visits. This isn't good enough parenting and Ann who uprooted her kids from a loving father should know this.

Joseph Bonaduce wrote the script and he apparently was an abusive ***** to his son, Danny so I am not surprised that this insensitive script came from his hand.

I have no problem with Frank being the primary caregiver. What I do mind is Ann stating that not everybody is cut out to be a mother. Tough. The child is there. Make an effort to get to know her, stop making it all about your feelings. She's your child too. Get over yourself and your hangups. SHE needs you to be a grownup here. Get some freaking therapy if you have to.

Am I being too judgmental here?

Probably.

I'd like to hear all of your thoughts even you disagree with me on this.

When my first husband and I split, he left and I kept the kids ! There was no question about that. If he tried to get custody and if I was deemed an unfit mother and they were rewarded to him I would have been devastated! My Mom and Dad were married years and years, never got divorced. I had a really good Mother. She loved being a Mother and passed that on to me and my Sister I guess, so I can't understand a woman thinking like Ginny!

However if that is how she feels. I agree with Ann, not all are cut out to be Mothers. And if Ginny feels that strongly about it that she is even uncomfortable spending one day a week with Lori, than wow ,it's a good thing she doesn't have custody of the poor kid ! It would be better to have a mother who pretty much gave you up than to have one that you have to stay with who resents you and doesn't love you! But Ginny did feel guilty about this, counseling or parenting classes would help.

A lot of the issue seemed to be Ginny didn't feel comfortable at the farm. Why couldn't Lori come and spend some weekends with Ginny at her apartment? Maybe that would make a difference? They could go shopping or to the movies! Do things Ginny was more comfortable in doing and maybe that would make her bond better. A 10 year old girl would love a movie or shopping, going to lunch in the city! Take her to visit Ann and the girls!

Bonnie, thanks so much for opening up about your experience with your first husband.

Just reading your posts here I can tell what a wonderful mother you are, you seem like a very kind person. Your children are very blessed to have you in their lives.:)

I, too am blessed with a wonderful mother who who I take care of now and feel very happy to be able to do so because she took such good care of me. My father and she were married for over fifty years until he died and they had 6 children. I am the youngest. Most of her care falls on my shoulders but I consider it to be an honor. My sister takes care of her occasionally, though.

Getting back to the show. I agree, why not have Ginny just bring the child over to see the girls? I am sure they would take an interest in her and play with her. My beef with Ginny is that she acted like more of a child than a mother. She needed to take more initiative and not let Frank be all things to that child. Ann said he was a "mother" to her. Not true, SHE was the mother and HE was the father. She should have stepped up her game some.



The whole story is kind of nonsense to begin with. Why would free living Ginny ever be attracted to a guy like Frank anyway? If she didn't want to be a mother, why didn't she get her tubes tied? Why didn't she get herself a car and drive to see her?:) How many buses did it take to get her there?

A good way to have written her out would be that she and Lorie decided to live together part of the time and she moved closer to be with her.

Oh, well.

Thanks for chiming in. Ginny will be gone soon enough and we won't have to think about her until the next cycle.

Incidentally, I don't think Ginny is a bad mother, per se. I think she seems like kind of a damaged person with low self esteem. She always seemed kind of sad and lost to me.

That is so nice you are taking care of your Mother. I bet she is a really sweet lady ,and she raised a very sweet daughter! My Mother passed away a few years ago. My Father is alive and doing well for his age. He lives at a retirement community in Pa, my Sister lives nearby! My parents too were married over 50 years. She was a housewife, never had a job outside the home! There are only three of us, My Brother, than my Sister and same as you, I'm the baby of the family!

I didn't really "get" the Ginny character too much. I didn't hate her, but I could take her or leave her. They tried to pull her off as a really attractive sexy woman which I didn't think was the case! But Dwayne sure dug her! The ep with Schneider's party was a fun ep, sad to see Dwayne get hurt, but I got a kick out of Beer Belly dancing! And the one where Ann went to the singles bar where Ginny worked was good, the ep. today about her daughter was a clunker of an ep.,so I could take her in small doses and it didn't bother me at all that she was gone after only one season!

Yeah , I don't think Ginny was a bad person, they were just trying to portray her as another liberated woman that was trying to find her own identity in the world! She just came off as being too rough IMO!

I think its great we have so much in common.:wave: My mom also was a stay at home Mom. I think we were lucky to have that luxury of seeing our Mom when we came home from school. I kind of took it for granted, come to think of it.

I am so glad your father is alive and doing well in his retirement home which leads me to my favorite Ginny moment when she was singing Mrs. Wonderful to Nedra Volz and Nedra wordlessly answered her back as if to say she was wonderful too.

Funny how Nedra didn't get a speaking part in the first episode. But she did get a chance to kick up her heels with Mr. Ferryman!

My thoughts: I actually didn't care much for this episode because I thought it was kind of a message-they-want-rammed-down-your-throats sort of thing to speak "Not wanting your kid is okay" and I don't really think that's the case. I found it kind of boring because it was mostly Ann and Ginny talking or Ginny and Frank talking. I found it kind of boring. I think Ginny could've been a great mother, but the thing was that Ginny was a city girl and Lori (or Laurie, however you spell it) was a farm girl who wasn't used to the city.

And I think it's great you guys open up to each other as much as you do. I think it's really awesome. You really get to know these people on the internet and it just seems beyond awesome to me. But, yeah, one of my least favorite eps but I did like the subplot and the second episode ("Julie's Operation") lol.

Thanks for your kind words Sven! I like your comments on Ginny being a city girl and Lori/Laurie being a country girl. That makes sense about why they couldn't connect. But the question is, if Ginny was such a city girl, how the heck did she pair up with a country guy so opposite to her? I guess we will never know.

By the way I think you are awesome!:wave:

Thanks for hanging out with us older folks!:)

^Thanks! That's so sweet! :wave:

My pleasure.

I edited my post because I forgot to add some things. LOL:)

^that's cool.

I felt sorry for Laurie. To think you have a mother but she doesn't want much contact with you. It was fun to see Dick Van Patten as the father. As one poster mentioned, If you don't like children, why did you conceive one?
At my local library I saw a book about Mary Louise Wilson (Ginny). A chapter or two comments on her days on One Day at a Time. I just glanced at the book. At first didn't know who Mary Louise was and glanced at the book and read a section and said, Oh yeah, I remember her now.

As one poster mentioned, If you don't like children, why did you conceive one?


But this is a common occurrence throughout history, people having kids without actually planning to. The moment is all they're thinking about, not the result.