Word: cribbing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...total responsive environment," the manufacturer calls it. That is the way one company describes its new three-level baby crib equipped with toys to grasp and pull, sand timers to watch, wheels to spin, voice-activated mobiles and sound tapes, plus a tank awash with live fish. According to the developers and to some child psychologists who have endorsed the environmental crib, almost every baby needs such a scientifically engineered corral for sleep and play. Parents who prefer the traditional, simple "containment crib," it has been argued, may end up with a child who is not too bright...
...claims for the gadget-laden crib typify a growing trend in child psychology toward forced early education and "programmed enrichment." Now Harvard Pediatrician Richard Feinbloom has strongly urged the American Academy of Pediatrics to take a stand against it. At the organization's recent annual meeting, he maintained that elaborate educational toys for infants are no be' er playthings than pots and pans. As a matter of fact, he said, their use, especially in the elaborate new "crib environments," may endanger normal intellectual and emotional development...
...rewarded in a different way?his first general public recognition?when in 1945 the Ladies' Home Journal printed a piece about another kind of Skinner box, the so-called air crib (see box, page 51). By the time the Journal article was printed, Skinner had finished writing his second book, though he did not find a publisher for it until 1948. The work was Waiden Two, completed in seven weeks of impassioned creativity. Writing it, says Skinner, was "pretty obviously a venture in self-therapy in which I was struggling to reconcile two aspects of my own behavior, represented...
...when Deborah Skinner was eleven months old, she had a rather dubious distinction: she was the most talked-about infant in America?the famous "baby in a box." The box, or "air crib" as her father called it, was his own invention, a glassed-in, insulated, air-controlled crib that he thought would revolutionize child rearing and, in line with his behaviorist theories, produce happier, healthier children...
...eliminate those troubles, Skinner designed Deborah's crib with temperature and humidity controls so that she could be warm and naked at the same time. Besides the hoped-for results?Deborah never suffered from a rash, for instance?the crib provided an unexpected fringe benefit: the Skinners discovered that the baby was so sensitive to even the slightest change in temperature that she could be made happy simply by moving the thermostat a notch or two. "We wonder how a comfortable temperature is ever reached with clothing and blankets," Skinner wrote in a 1945 issue of Ladies' Home Journal. "During...