Hate to dump on Lindsay Lohan while the poor girl is in rehab but the Mean Girls star really is a cautionary tale on the travails of teenage stardom.

I couldn’t help but think of poor Lindsay when I chatted with Melissa Joan Hart recently, a teen star whose parents are not hungrier for the spotlight than their child (yeah you two, Dina and Michael Lohan) and who has managed to transition to adulthood happy and healthy and balanced.

Melissa, best known for her hit television shows Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Clarissa Explains it All, returns to television tonight in the ABC Family sitcom Melissa & Joey opposite fellow former child star Joey Lawrence.

Melissa, now 34 and a mother of two, took issue with the notion that childhood stardom is a bad thing despite the widely publicized troubles of Lohan, Britney Spears and the entire cast of Different Strokes.

” I think a lot of people forget about the good ones,” she said. “They go off to have families or maybe they dabble in directing, producing so you forget about them. But you look at Ron Howard, someone who came out of it and survived and thrived.”

It also helps to not have people like Dina and Michael Lohan as parents it would seem.

“For me, it all starts with my family,” said Melissa. “Also, I look at it as a job, as work. My family is most important and my job comes second. I want longevity, I want to be here a long time. I want to be on a set for the rest of my life. What do I have to do to make that happen? I’ve got to be nice to people, I’ve got to show up on time and I’ve got to be good.”

Such a balanced, business-like attitude doesn’t get you much publicity though I point out.

“I got married, I had kids. What? That’s not enough? I gotta do some blow and end up with a DUI and curse someone out? It’s like you have to be arrested and end up in jail in order to be interesting.”

I suggest she write some kind of guide book on transitioning to adulthood in the entertainment business and she said: “I think I might.’

Melissa continued to work in TV movies (including the hugely-rated Holiday in Handcuffs) after Sabrina went off the air in 2003 but she also got married to musician Mark Wilkerson and gave birth to sons in 2006 and 2008.

But the schedule of a TV series works well with her family life and that’s a big reason why she is happy to be doing Melissa & Joey which has a similar premise to the classic ABC sitcom Who’s the Boss?

Here is the premise: Melissa plays a local politician from a political family. When a family scandal leaves her niece, Lennox, and nephew, Ryder, without their parents, Mel takes them in. Meanwhile, Joe (Lawrence) is a former commodities trader–left bankrupt after a Ponzi scheme–who is searching for a job. So when Mel finds it hard to handle an instant family and her own life, she hires Joe to become the family’s new male nanny, or “manny”.

“It’s a little racier and edgier than people expect so as long as they aren’t shocked going into the first episode then it’ll be all good,” Melissa said of Sabrina fans who watch the new show. “Sabrina was the quissessential teen, not sure of her surroundings, not sure of her future, not sure what she wanted. Does she fit in? Does she want to fit in? She was always trying to figure out who she was for seven years and that’s hard to play. So now to be able to be self-centered, loosey goosey, kind of like Lucy. I get to do physical comedy and be silly and very female.”

Of working with Lawrence, she said: “We’ve known each other since we were four, great friends, our families are friends. We both have worked in the same industry in the same format for so long. There’s a great shorthand, we click really well and we both have the same objective which is let’s work hard, let’s make it fun and let’s go home to our families. It helps that we’re all on the same path.”

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