Melissa Joan Hart Says Money From Early Acting Jobs Went to Supporting Her Family — Including Her 7 Siblings

She might be known to many as Sabrina the Teenage Witch, but to her seven siblings, Melissa Joan Hart is just big sister. 

During a recent appearance on ABC Audio and Good Morning America’s Pop Culture Moms podcast with Andie Mitchell and Sabrina Kohlberg, the hosts asked Hart, 48, about her experience growing up as the oldest sibling and if she ever experienced what has been pegged as “eldest daughter syndrome.”

And though the Clarissa Explains It All actress hadn’t heard of the phenomenon, she certainly resonated with the notion of feeling the pressures and responsibilities of being the first-born.

"I felt like I had to behave to be a role model for them,” Hart explained. “You know, the money that I made on commercials and Clarissa or any of my acting jobs, it always went to the family.”

“I got to go pick out a Barbie and like, as I got older, some people were like, ‘Oh, that's not right. You should have kept your money,’” she added.  “And I was like ... I would rather put food on the table and make sure my siblings had good clothes and bicycles for Christmas, you know, things like that. So, I definitely felt like I wanted to be responsible for them.”

Beyond the financial support, which included paying her brother’s cell phone bill into his late 20s, Hart says she also physically took care of her siblings and says she's even opened her home to them in the past. 

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The mother of three recalled one time in her late teens when her mom, Paula, left her with her siblings while going on vacation with her soon-to-be husband. 

“She left to go to Mexico and I had a six-month-old, a seven-year-old, nine-year-old, thirteen-year-old and a fifteen-year-old in the house,” she says of her five younger siblings at the time.  

“I know that my 15 year old sister disappeared,” she remembers of the four days she was left in charge. “She went to a friend's house and didn't come home but I figured where she was. The other one I had to get on a bus in the morning and then the other two I had to walk across the street. Then I had to bottle feed the other one all morning, change diapers and order pizza. I don't remember how I did it."

Hart assures that their mom “would never have left if she didn't know I could do that.”

“I had lived on my own for four years in Orlando,” she says.  “My 17 was probably the equivalent of like someone else's 24.”

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The Melissa & Joey actress says all the caring she did for her siblings over the years impacted her parenting skills later on. 

“I was a better mom for it,” she says. 

Hart and her husband Mark Wilkerson, have welcomed three sons together: Mason, 18,  Braydon, 16, and Tucker, 11.