Word: babyland
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Among other things, this all means fathers are now much better positioned to write parenting books like Michael Lewis' Home Game and Sam Apple's American Parent: My Strange and Surprising Adventures in Modern Babyland. These are nothing like the self-punishing Momoirs of old, nor the earnest advice books, nor the new genre of Bad Mom confessions that somehow manage to be self-flagellating and smug at the same time...
They were born in 1978 when Xavier Roberts, then a 21-year-old art student, created the hand-stitched life-size dolls he called "so homely they're adorable." "Delivered" in Cleveland, Georgia, at a factory named BabyLand General Hospital, chubby-cheeked Kids of all ethnicities came complete with birth certificates and adoption papers. After Roberts signed an agreement with Coleco to mass-produce a smaller version of the dolls in 1982, they caused stampedes at toy stores, hitting annual sales of $600 million in 1985 before their popularity waned at decade's end. Now marketed by Mattel, the Kids...
...Babyland -- that's what the gravedigger called it. Then he pointed to the far side of Houston's Hollywood Cemetery, where a sea of tombstones gives way to a grassy hillside. A dainty marble cherub, its head severed at the neck by vandals, guards the spot. Surrounding the lifeless angel are scores of infants' graves, most with modest plaques, one raising a silent protest: SO SMALL, SO SWEET, SO SOON...
...other! We're here to learn!" scolds the redhead. Silence. Then a few whispers in Zulu. "Heee, heee, haaa, haaa!" sings the teacher. More giggles. When class is finally dismissed, the kids clatter up a narrow staircase, whistling and ululating. The doors are plastered with bumper stickers: KIDS ZONE, BABYLAND BLVD, I LOVE MY BOYFRIEND...
...little darlings are parentless and begging to be taken home. They do not come from stork, or test tube, but from a former medical clinic in Cleveland, Ga., called Babyland General. They are dolls. Each fabric-and-polyester infant is a "soft sculpture," handmade by one of 125 employees of Entrepreneur Xavier Roberts, 24, a former artist. In just two years, Babyland has "delivered" 50,000 babies at prices of $125 to $200 each, which Roberts insists on calling adoption fees. "You don't buy them, you adopt them," said one middle-aged Miami woman, pressing a fat baby...