Psychologist B.F. Skinner was an expert in behaviorism, and was also a prolific author and inventor. He invented what became known as the Skinner box, in which an animal subject could be trained by a system of rewards. But that had nothing to do with another of his inventions, which he called the "air crib." When Skinner's second daughter Deborah was born, he and his wife Yvonne designed a modern crib for her that was revolutionary. It was higher than normal, so a parent didn't have to stoop down to reach the baby. It was enclosed, with a glass front, and had temperature and ventilation controls plus a dust filter. The linen on the mattress was on a roller, so it could be changed with a simple crank. A few hundred families used the air crib with reportedly good results. Skinner wrote about the crib for Ladies Home Journal in 1945.
But it never really caught on, mainly because of Skinner's reputation as an experimental psychologist and the association of the crib with the Skinner box. News stories said that Deborah was raised in the crib, although she spent no more time in it than any baby would in a traditional crib. The idea smacked of automated parenting, even though Skinner's (and Yvonne's) goal was to reduce the drudgery of parenting an infant while providing a healthy environment. And that's somewhat of a shame, because now we know that widespread use of the air crib might have saved many babies' lives by preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Read about the concepts behind the air crib that turned out to be the right idea at The Los Angeles Review of Books. -via Strange Company
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