Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 150

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job, nonpayment of child support and alimony, and even recovery from
a heart attack. During the series run, Ann learned how to be an adult,
a contemporary woman, and a new breed of parent
When the series first aired in 1975, Ann was a thirty-five year
old displaced homemaker who was trying to begin anew after the
dissolution of her seventeen-year marriage. With her fairy tale
nuclear family only a faint memory, she had to grow up all over again
under vastly different circumstances. Although the show was about
the new family she fashioned, it really centered on Ann's search for
selfhood. She is forced to fin