any one else bothered by the ending?

Ellen talks about the ending in her autobiography. The original script had Alice marrying David. Ellen thought that was to conventional and wanted to change it so that Alice pursues her dream. The studio told her that if Alice didn't end up with the man, they weren't going to make the movie. She writes this:
"So Marty and I agreed that that was our big problem. How do we have her move out of her husband's house (the very meaning of the title), hit the road, encounter an even more violent masculine figure, learn something about herself - who she is, what she wants - and end up in another man's house, without compromising the integrity of our work and what we were trying to say about a woman's search for independence? The scene got rewritten and rewritten and we just couldn't get it. Finally it was the day before it was scheduled to be shot and we still had no scene. We rehearsed the next day's shooting at the end of each day. We were doing an improv on the scene trying to find the way I could give up my dreams of going to Monterey and still have it be a good thing, not a surrender to patriarchal values, when Kris Kristofferson, playing David, said, 'Come on, I'll take you to Monterey.' It was like the room was suddenly filled with sunshine. 'You will?' I said, feeling a little smile break out on my face. 'Sure, I don't give a damn about that ranch. Come on.' We had broken through. We'd found the change in conciousness that the whole movie led up to. The man was willing to support the woman in her aspirations. What she wanted was important enough for him to make a scarifice. What a concept. Notice that I hadn't come up with that solution - "the man" did. Kris had to release me/Alice from the bondage of the old way of thinking. In real life, I wasn't there yet. Thank God for Kris. He was smart and awake enough to see what Alice - and I - needed."

The ending is fine. And I loved that as they're walking you see The Monterey sign in Tuscon.

Life doesn't always work out like we planned. But for Alice and her son it works out by landing in Tuscon.

And so what about the smack on the a**, it was overdue.

It's called The Monterey. And she finally says to her son: "I can be a singer anywhere..." Home is where the heart is

That's right. It wouldn't even be 'child abuse' if he slapped the kid back in the face or pulled on his ear or grabbed him by the scruff of the neck or the collar & lifted him up in the air. Anymore more than it would be teenager abuse if some junior high school kid of 13 or 14 decided to smack you in the face & you smacked him back. In fact, with strangers, most people are allowed to defend themselves full on and punch the kid's lights out if he attacks you, it's only with their own kids that defending against violence becomes a child abuse issue.

Now, obviously you don't slap a 10 year old kid hard and knock his teeth out or punch him in the face but you teach him a lesson that violent behavior won't be tolerated. It would only be 'abuse' if you slapped him everytime he didn't do what you wanted him to do, like you tell him to clean his room and even offer him money and he doesn't do it or eat his greens or clean his plate and he doesn't do it and you smack him in the head, that's abusive but not if he's clearly stepped over the line and acted in a physically abusive way himself. You can also grab him and throw him in a room with nothing but four walls to stare at, lock the door and refuse to let him out for two days without hitting him at all as punishment but that would be considered even more 'inhumane'of you by all these morons, since how dare you punish a kid for misbehavior for locking him in a room in solitary confinement for two days and throw him only his food and water ? In fact, if you asked the kid himself, he would probably prefer the smack to the 2 day imprisonment.

You're supposed to let him grow up into a total and complete punk thinking that whatever he does there are no consequences to himself, just like the Kristofferson character correctly lectures the Alice character. That's the plan, to destroy society through programming kids and parents through their mass-media and colluding government (they always work hand-in-hand) that discipline and manners have no place in life while in reality they are the most important things you can teach any human being since true freedom itself is not libertinism or hedonism or do whatever feels good but a hard discipline that must be practiced consistently before it can ever be won.

Spanking has been associated with increased aggressive behavior, substance and alcohol abuse, stilted cognitive, emotional, and social development, stilted academic performance, and mental health problems.

But I'd love to see the scientific data for this statement:

you are all the reason we have so many undisciplined thugs being born who can't ever be disciplined as they are giving highest priority.

David was willing to give up his life to become a part of Alice's.