For Productive Parents

and people with large families everywhere.  Excerpts:

...Nothing, one would think, could be more personal than the choice to conceive and bear a child. And yet, as grand multiparas well know, simply leaving the house with more than two or three children is perceived as a challenge, a circus, a rebuke, a plea for help, a flag of insanity. Really all you want to do is mail a letter, buy some milk or a couple of pregnancy tests, or pay the librarian for this week’s crop of ruined books— but the world at large is sure that what you need right now, in the middle of the produce aisle, is to get into a conversation with a gawking stranger about these kids, these kids, allll these kids!

Faced with such social awkwardness, you may be at a loss for words. Some of us are able to use our conspicuous presence in public as a chance to witness to the joy of this lifestyle. Still others see it as an opportunity to ditch one or two of the slower kids in the gathering crowd.

No matter which description fits you, there will come a day when you are urging an unruly string of children down the narrow hall of the hospital, where you are late for an appointment to have the blood of several of them painfully tested for something you know perfectly well they don’t have. Some of them will be licking the walls, one will be wailing about losing her vending machine puppy in the parking lot, and two will merely be going silently boneless.

It is at moments like these when some sweaty bozo in an AC/DC T-shirt will appear, plaster himself comically to the wall to let you pass, and remark, “Haw haw haw, looks like someone don’t have a TEE-vee!”

Has this happened to you? Well, even in the midst of the trials of the first trimester, I’m basically a giver. I am here to help. If one of your wiener kids hasn’t shoved a fig newton into the printer, feel free to make a copy, laminate it, and keep it in that industrial strength duffel bag you’ve been trying to pass of as a purse. And next time, you’ll be ready with ...

Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions About Your Big Family...