A record six sets of twins crossed the stage to receive their diplomas at Roselle Catholic High School’s graduation this month.
Aiden and Gabriel. Lenzay and Naisha. Jason and Olivia. Allison and John. Gamael and Samael. And Efrem and Nicole.
That adds up to 12 students out of 98 graduates — meaning 12 percent of the school’s graduating class are twins this year.
“I don’t recall any number of multiples close to that,” said Joe Skrec, a Roselle Catholic graduate who has coached the girls’ basketball team for a quarter-century and serves as assistant principal.
Twins, triplets, quadruplets and other higher-order births — a phenomenon captured more than a decade ago on TV’s “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ — were increasing in the early 2000s, in part due to fertility treatments. Many of those kids are about 18 now and graduating from high school.
Though the number of multiple births has started to ebb nationwide in recent years due to advancements in fertility treatments, there are still plenty of multiples in the Class of 2022, local high schools report.
Woodstown High School in Salem County has five sets of twins and one set of triplets in its 160-student senior class this year.
“This is the first set of triplets that I’ve had,” said Richard Senor, who has been the school’s principal for four years.
Other New Jersey schools also report handing out diplomas to unusually high numbers of multiples.
Arthur L. Johnson High School in Clark has three sets of triplets and one set of twins among its 186 graduates. Montville High School is reporting three sets of twins and one set of triplets among its 255-member graduating class. Shore Regional High School in West Long Branch has four sets of twins among its 168 graduates.
The graduating classes at Vernon Township High School has 259 students, including one set of quadruplets and one set of twins.
Even middle schools are noticing a surge.
In Denville, Valleyview Middle School has eight sets of twins among 181 students in its 8th grade class, according to the school.
The high number of twins have been part of life in Denville for years, said Kristy Doherty, mother of twins Jonathan and Amanda.
“When you had a birthday party, if you invited the whole class, you had to have several other kids, too, because you can’t invite one twin and not the other,” Doherty said.
In New Jersey, the rise of multiple births led to a 2008 law, signed by then-Gov. Jon Corzine, letting parents of twins and multiple-birth children decide whether their kids will be placed in the same classroom or separated.
Until then, the decision had been left up to school administrators, said Montville Schools Superintendent René Rovtar.
“The conventional wisdom for many years has been to separate twins or multiple births to allow them to have their separate identity. But in smaller districts, that’s not always possible,” Rovtar said.
Doherty said she and her husband opted to place Jonathan and Amanda in the same kindergarten class, but separated them starting in first grade.
“We just realized they were very different children. We felt they would grow and learn better on their own, separated, rather than following each other around,” she said.
Jonathan and Amanda will attend Morris Knolls High School in September.
In the decades following the advent of fertility treatments, the world’s first “test tube baby,” Louise Joy Brown, was born in England in 1978. As fertility treatments became more accessible, the U.S. birth rate of twins nearly doubled and triplet and higher-order births quadrupled, according to a 2016 CDC report on assisted reproductive technology.
The CDC estimated that more than one-third of twins and more than three-quarters of triplets and higher order multiples resulted from conception aided ovulation induction, ovarian stimulation, in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments.
However, the rate of multiple births has been declining in the U.S. since 2014. That is likely due to improvements in assisted reproductive technology, most notably that fewer embryos are being transferred during procedures.
For example, consider the evolution in twins, which were 97 percent of multiple births in the U.S. in 2020.
The “twinning rate” — defined by the CDC as the number of twin deliveries per per 1,000 total births — rose from 18.9 in 1980 to 33.2 in 2009, a 76 percent increase. Twin birth rates leveled off through 2012, then rose during the next two years — peaking at 33.9 per 1,000 total births in 2014.
By 2018, the U.S. twin birth rate had declined by 4 percent.
In 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 112,437 twin births, or 31.1 percent per 1,000, according to the CDC. There were also 2,738 triplet births and 137 quadruplet and higher-order births.
While multiple birth rates have been slipping, they likely will remain well above the rates prior to fertility treatments, the numbers show. That means schools in New Jersey will continue educating a noteworthy number of twins, triplets and others.
It is unclear how many twins, triplets and quads are currently enrolled in New Jersey schools. That data is not tracked by the state education department, said spokesman Michael Yaple.
For parents of multiples, fielding curious questions about their twins, triplets and quadruplets are a way of life.
“The first question that people ask us is, are they identical. They’re fraternal, a boy and a girl,” explained Dina DiMenno, the mom of Jason and Olivia at Roselle Catholic.
But having twins also has its perks, she said.
“Having two kids going to the same school, at the same time, and the same grade, definitely was accommodating. They fed off each other. When one forget the homework, the other knew what the homework was,” said DiMenno, who also has a 13-year-old daughter.
Efforts were made to develop their separate identities, including having the twins attend separate classes at the request of DiMenno and her husband. They both played basketball during their freshman year, but while Jason continued with the sport, Olivia switched to soccer.
“They had different friends, but always came back to intermingle the friends together,” she said.
Starting in September, both will be heading off in different directions. Jason is off to Union County College to focus on esports — a growing industry centered around video games — and sports management.
Olivia is heading to Seton Hall University, where she will be focusing on theater and communications.
“Mentally, emotionally, physically — I’m proud of who they’ve become,” their mother said.
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Rob Jennings may be reached at rjennings@njadvancemedia.com.
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