Melissa Francis is no stranger to the spotlight. As a successful child actor in the 1980s, she appeared in many commercials and television shows, becoming best known for her stint as Cassandra Cooper Ingalls on the beloved hit Little House on the Prairie. Cut to adulthood, where a variety of roles in TV journalism have led to Francis’s current spot as an anchor for the Fox Business Network. But despite all that time spent under the lights and in the public eye, only now, in her new memoir, Diary of a Stage Mother’s Daughter (Weinstein Books), is Francis telling the very private story of the less-than-perfect side of her childhood.
What finally prompted Francis to tackle a memoir was Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which touched off a firestorm of debate when it was released in early 2011. “I know what it’s like to have a mother who pushes very hard. It made me invincible, and it broke down my sister beyond repair,” says Francis. “When I saw Battle Hymn, I said to myself, this is so dangerous. It’s time for me to write my story. Once I started, the book flew from my fingers.”
While Francis loved acting when she was a child and says the book is packed with an inside look at her early career, it also shows how as she became more successful, her sister, Tiffany, suffered under their mother’s harsh style of parenting. Francis was lavished with attention, but her sister was increasingly neglected and eventually turned to substance abuse. The climax of this tragic family story came in the early 1990s, when her sister was dying of pancreatic failure at age 32 and Francis issued an ultimatum to her mother—step up to the plate or Francis was done with their relationship. Her mother declined. Though she remains close with her dad, Francis hasn’t seen her mother in more than 10 years.
Francis hopes that her memoir will help open people’s eyes to the different needs of different types of children. “Now I have two boys of my own—they were born needing different approaches,” she says. “It’s about how to produce the most successful child.”
To write has been a longtime dream for Francis, and she previously attempted to tell her story as fiction, only to have it rejected as not authentic. Once she began to write it as a memoir, however, it clicked, and she squeezed in time whenever possible, including an hour every morning during hair and makeup. Francis finds writing a joy and is working on a new project.
“I would like this to be the beginning of my career as a writer,” she says.
