Erma Bombeck, writer, humorist, and television personality, was primarily identified as a housewife and mother. Because she knew it so well, she was able to offer the housewife's-eye-view of the world in her writing. And it is because she took those roles so seriously that she was able to show the humorous side of the life of homemaker and mother so effectively.

She was born Erma Louise Fiste in Dayton, Ohio. Bombeck's mother, who worked in a factory, was only sixteen when Bombeck was born, and her father was a crane operator who died when she was nine years old. When little Erma showed talent for dancing and singing, her mother hoped to make her into a child star—the next Shirley Temple. But her daughter had other ideas. Drawn to writing very early, Bombeck wrote her first humor column for her school newspaper...