Store serves adoptive, multiethnic families
At the time, Maureen Tallon thought it was the cruelest day of her life -- the day she found out that she probably never could bear children.
Today, Tallon said, the news was a blessing in disguise. It brought 9-month-old Tara Fei into her life -- all the way from Hefei, China.
Their delight over Tara, who soon will be 4, inspired Tallon and her husband, Ken Knoblock, to "raise awareness of the joys of adoption" by opening Children of the World, a Westborough shop that caters to adoptive and multiethnic families.
"If someone had told me then that day would be the best day of my life, I would have said they were crazy," said Tallon, 46. "But it was, and I wanted to spread the word that adoption is not a compromise."
The idea for the store came to Tallon in a predawn epiphany, causing her to sit bolt upright in bed. In most department stores, she found, the dolls were Caucasian, usually blond and blue-eyed. She envisioned a store with dolls that looked like Tara Fei and like children born in Russia, Korea, Guatemala, and other nations, a store that would foster appreciation of world cultures and help children adopted from abroad connect with their native heritage.
"The idea is that children grow up feeling grounded, that they didn't just drop out of space into the US," said Knoblock, 47. "So that they have their own story."
Chinese music wafted through the air one day last week, as shoppers perused Ukrainian cookbooks, Persian love stories, Peruvian drums, Chinese rice paper umbrellas, Russian nesting dolls, and bead bracelets from India. Clocks on the wall gave the time in Boston, Moscow, Beijing, New Delhi, and Mexico City.
Tracey Carter, a teacher at a Unitarian Church in Hopedale, stopped in to buy a "world playground activity set" for a unit on multiculturalism. Finding educational materials about certain foreign countries is often difficult, Carter said.
New customers at Children of the World often delight in finding that their frustrating searches for books or toys from their child's homeland are over. A Chinese-Korean couple who discovered the store "just about went crazy" and hugged them when they left, Tallon and Knoblock said.
Amy LaBarge, 36, of Leominster, called the store "a wonderful resource" for parents teaching their adopted child about the heritage of his or her homeland. LaBarge adopted her son Tuan, 3, from Vietnam when he was 5 months old and is scheduled to travel to China in a few weeks to adopt a second child, Liu. She will bring her one of the store's most popular items, a Chinese doll that speaks English and Chinese.
Vicki Peterson, executive director of Wide Horizons for Children, a Waltham nonprofit adoption agency, said such items serve as excellent "jumping off points" to acquaint adopted children with their homelands. Peterson's group sponsors events for adoptive families, such as a Chinese Children's Day, a Latin American celebration, and a Korean Harvest festival that draws 1,000 people.
Adam Pertman, a former Boston Globe reporter who now directs the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, said research and experience have shown that adopted children have a healthier self-image if they "know who they are and where they came from." While past generations tended to treat adopted children as "blank slates," today more adoptive parents are raising their children to appreciate their original culture, said Pertman, the author of "Adoption Nation."
Children of the World almost did not get past the planning stage. As with most ideas, there were a "million reasons not to do it," Tallon recalled. But when Knoblock was laid off from his software consulting job, the couple decided to give it a go.
A year later, last April, the store opened in the town center. While sales were sluggish at first, the store is now breaking even, the owners say, and has gained a following, especially among teachers seeking multicultural materials for classes, immigrants, and a close-knit adoption community.
In addition to a rising number of international adoptions, the store also benefits from the expanding ethnic diversity in Westborough and surrounding towns. From 1990 to 2000, Westborough's foreign-born population surged to 14 percent of its nearly 18,000 residents. In nearby Marlborough, 16 percent of the population is foreign-born; in Hudson, 15 percent. The bulk of new arrivals come from Brazil, with substantial numbers hailing from India, Pakistan, and several Far Eastern and Latin American nations, according to the 2000 Census.
Yet Tallon and Knoblock hasten to point out that the store offers more than niche appeal.
"Everyone's from someplace," Knoblock said. "Everyone has a certain pride in their heritage and wants to pass it along to their children."
