Big Family Hats

Every parent of a big family knows the script. OKC Mom's list of things not to say to a large family opens with "Do you know what causes that?" and runs through "Are they all yours?", "Are you Catholic or Mormon or something?" and "Better you than me." A mom of five on the same site answered the lot: yes, they are all ours; yes, we know our hands are full; yes, we know what causes that. This collection puts those answers on a hat, in the first person. MOM OF MANY and DAD OF MANY are the plain badges. YES THEY'RE ALL MINE and YES I KNOW WHAT CAUSES IT are the replies, and MY HANDS ARE FULL AND SO IS THE VAN answers the hands-full remark with the big van. The rest are in-group jokes: roll call at the grocery store, a head count in place of a favorite, the switch from man-to-man to zone defense once the kids outnumber the adults, a grocery cart that deserves a commercial driver's license, and every name tried before the right one, which a #MyBigMormonFam tweet in LDS Living described as mom going through all the brothers' and sisters' names first. Families this size are rarer than they were: Pew found four in ten mothers in their early forties had four or more children in 1976, and 15% in 2016. YES THEY'RE ALL MINE and MY GROCERY CART NEEDS A CDL each get a second colorway.