Sharon's main storylines depicted the plight of a young woman struggling to find her identity while growing up in a broken home and coping with her mother's alcoholism and her father's infidelities. Anita Dobson, who played Sharon's mother Angie, discussed Sharon and Angie's relationship, suggesting that Angie was not a good mother: "I think someone handed Sharon over to her one day, and Angie thought of her like this glistening Christmas present. I think she never really thought it through beforehand. I do believe she really wanted a child and she loved Sharon, but eventually found the competition pretty difficult to deal with in regard to Den's attentions. She was pretty rough on Sharon because of her drinking." Sally Vincent, writing for The Guardian, has pontificated about the dynamics of Sharon's relationship with both her parents in 2001. She suggested that viewers felt sorry for Sharon "because not only had her [birth] mother given her away, but her adoptive parents were the legendary Dirty Den and the feckless Angie, erstwhile landlord and lady of The Queen Vic, who were always too busy being dirty and feckless, in our opinion, to take proper care of their little girl. We knew enough about family psychology to know that all those presents they lavished upon her were no substitute for presence. We knew what neglect and emotional absence can do to a growing girl." David Buckingham, in his 1987 book Public Secrets: EastEnders and its audience, analysed the relationship between Sharon and her parents, suggesting that teenage Sharon was suspended between childhood and adulthood. He reflected that Den frequently referred to her as "just a child", but that Sharon herself sought to assert her status as an adult, describing her parents as "immature" or "childish". In character dialogue, Sharon suggested that Den had tried to keep his wife Angie in the role of a baby, but that he himself was a child, stating "I behave more like an adult that you've ever done". During this period, Sharon was shown to question her parents' capability to offer her advice, and both Den and Angie had difficulty refuting her arguments. In one episode Sharon questioned, "How come you two always know what's best for me? You haven't exactly made a good job of your own lives!". Sharon was shown to share a particularly close friendship with Michelle Fowler in the serial. Kingsley suggested that Michelle