The parents of the Phoenix clan are John Lee Bottom and Arlyn Bottom (née Dunetz). They were born in California and New York respectively; John is basically of English ancestry, and Arlyn's parents were from Russia and Hungary.
John and Arlyn met in 1968 and married in 1969. They joined a religious group, the Children of God, with whom they began traveling through South America. They eventually became disenchanted with the Children of God, and in 1978 they decided to leave the group and return to the USA. They changed their last name to Phoenix at this time, to signify "a new beginning".
The five famous siblings were all born between 1970 and 1978. They began acting on the streets and in talent contests, in order to help support the family, and were eventually discovered by Iris Burton, a leading Hollywood children's agent. She found them work in television; and the rest, as they say, is history.
© Haydn Thompson 2017