Question: Is it ever explained where the kids' other parent is? I remember Carol saying she and Frank both came from failed marriages, which means they weren't widows.
Question: Did they ever explain what happened to Brendan, who was missing this season?
Answer: According to the SBS website, Brendan's disappearance was never really explained. He just kind of faded out. He was hired as the cute "little" one and as he got older he wasn't as cute. When the Lamberts had the little girl, they got their cuteness factor back and didn't need as many kids around.
Carol and Frank continued to tell people they had seven children throughout the remainder of the show's run, but they never referred to Brendan after season 6.
Answer: The actor that also played Brendan quit acting altogether.
Answer: I could be mistaken, but when the series debuted, its premise was something along the lines of "A divorced contractor and a widowed beautician impulsively marry." If that is true, then the Foster children's father is dead. As for Frank, it could be that his wife was an unfit mother and is therefore not in her children's lives. Perhaps the writers felt addressing these issues would lead to more questions, or at the least require characters to bring up the unseen parents more in conversation, so perhaps they felt it was just better to never talk about them at all and let any discussions about them remain off-screen.
Phaneron ★