By admin 
Janet Zitting remembers the day she realized her family wasn’t like others.
“I remember when I was 8 or 10, I was talking to one of the neighbor kids,” Zitting, now 32, recalls. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, so how many moms do you have?’ And she’s like, ‘What do you mean? I only have one mom.’ And I’m like, ‘Really? One mom? Oh.’ And then after, I’m walking away, and I’m thinking in my head, ‘Wow, she only has one mom. That’s so sad.'”
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Zitting thought it was weird because her family practiced polygamy, something that, up until then, she thought was normal. She was raised by her dad and four moms, including her biological mother. She has 44 siblings, and she’s gone viral on TikTok answering people’s burning questions about the ins and outs of growing up with that many brothers and sisters under one roof.
And, before you ask, yes, she remembers all of their names.
“For me, it was totally normal growing up this way. But, when I talk to other people, it’s like a reminder of how it’s not their normal, too, so it gives me that perspective,” Zitting says. “It was very secretive when I was a kid. So, as I became an adult, it felt pretty freeing to talk about it.”
She has 44 siblings. The internet is obsessed.
Zitting says her family was part of a group called The Work − an offshoot of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, led by Warren Jeffs. Members of The Work, like Zitting’s parents, practice polygamy.
While polygamy, or being married to more than one person, is illegal in the U.S., it is decriminalized in Utah.
Zitting became one of the first of her siblings to leave The Work over 13 years ago. About half her siblings, she says, followed suit, while the other half remain a part of it.
“A lot of people ask if I had to escape, but I just told my parents that I was moving out,” she says. “It was hard in the beginning, just because when you first leave a religion like that, everyone’s so passionate about it, so they think you’re making a mistake. But I knew I wasn’t. I just knew that it wasn’t for me.”
Now, Zitting is a mom and TikTok sensation. Her videos answering questions about growing up with 44 siblings have gone viral, with many people stunned learning about her life.
“The reactions just make me laugh, because people are shocked,” Zitting says. “Some people are saying it’s AI. Some people are saying there’s no way. But it’s just funny that my life, what is normal to me, can have such a big reaction.”
The most common question she gets is if she can really remember all her siblings’ names. The answer is yes − and she knows their birthdays, too. Another common one is the age difference between her oldest and youngest siblings. The oldest is 48. The youngest, 15.
“We have a sibling group chat, a sister group chat and then there’s a lot of other side chats,” she says. “Growing up there were cliques. There were different groups of siblings that would hang out. And now that we’re adults, that’s kind of changed, where we’re hanging out with everybody.”
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Zitting’s family did not celebrate Christmas when she was growing up. They didn’t celebrate birthdays, either. Her parents, she says, claimed it was because birthdays were “worldly,” but looking back, Zitting suspects it had more to do with finances than piety. Even as adults, she says, her siblings really only throw birthday parties for milestone years, like 30 or 40.
Her family lived on a small farm with livestock and a garden, which helped lessen the cost of groceries. But the occasional trip to Costco, she says, could still come out to a small fortune. Zitting recalls one Costco grocery bill around the holidays that totaled around $1,500.
Privacy was also a scarce commodity. Zitting shared a room with seven of her sisters. At one point, during a construction project on the house, she says there were as many as 16 kids in one bedroom at a time. She’d sneak off into a blankets closet, just to take naps.
“We just had to work together like a community, because it was a community,” Zitting says. “We had people raising the kids, cleaning the house, cooking food, cleaning it up, taking care of the animals, taking care of the garden. It was a constant flow, every single day, nonstop.”
What Zitting’s life is like today
Now, Zitting has a child of her own. She hopes to have one or two more. She considers herself spiritual but not religious − far less stringent than how she was raised.
“I don’t plan on having a million kids because I raised some of my younger siblings and I nannied a lot, so I feel like I already had kids of my own in a way,” she says.
Though Zitting has left The Work, she doesn’t have harsh feelings toward siblings that have chosen to stay.
“A lot of them really are truly my best friends, and I love how close we all are, especially my sisters. I’m even closer with them, and they’re just all so loving, so kind, and they’re so beautiful inside and out. And I love how family oriented we are,” she says. “The religion was really controlling for me, for the type of person that I am. It felt like I was in a box. So I’m really happy I’m not a part of that anymore, even though the religion is for a lot of my family. … I’m just happy I realized that it’s not for me.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: She grew up in polygamy and has 44 siblings. Now she’s sharing her story
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Reporting by Charles Trepany, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect
This story was originally published July 6, 2026 at 7:34 AM.