The sorry lives of ex-child stars are the stuff of legend. Now, MentalFloss has uncovered the unique parenting styles that have given the world such delightful trainwreck has-beens as Danny Bonaduce and Gary Coleman, though how they could write this entire piece without a single reference to Michael Jackson has me wondering…

A sampling from the section on Anissa Jones, who played Buffy on Family Affair:

Yes, everyone seemed to love Anissa except her own parents. Her folks had divorced since moving to L.A., and Mrs. Jones took charge of her daughter’s career. She forced an unhappy Anissa to wear baby-doll dresses and style her hair in childish pigtails at the age of 13, simply because she had a lucrative marketing deal to sell a Buffy-style clothing line. When Anissa turned 15, no one in her family remembered to buy her a birthday cake.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 7:29 pm by raincoaster and is filed under Celebrity Kids. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.