A view of family life from one key perspective - the mother's/wife's.

The Cabbage Patch focuses on Janet, a suburban housewife who, at the age of 36, has allowed herself to go to seed and is maniacal in the easily distracted, bad-tempered way that she deals with her domestic strife. Young daughters Kate and Elizabeth, while not uniquely problematic, cause her plenty of turmoil, and husband Tony's work in computers affords him the right, he thinks, to loll about at the house in a 'notice-me!' kind of way.

Janet also has to endure her friends Ruth and Susie, who consider themselves superior, and her meddlesome mother, Lillian, whose idea of encouragement is to suggest that her daughter quit the scene and marry somebody else.