TIL B.F. Skinner invented an air crib.
Baby In A Box
Psychologist B. F. Skinner create a "baby in a box" crib that was designed to make the mother's role easier. It would probably have prevented a lot of SIDS death, but because of its association with Skinner, it never caught on.
SKINNER!!!
Its wierd to me people would think an association with B.F. Skinner is a negative.
Yeah, me too, but we're looking backwards.
The guy was in an era where the things he espoused and challenged were not looked well upon, and he caught flak from the general populace because of that.
Remember, he was an early anti-spanking proponent, though mostly in schools afaicr. He had pretty strong beliefs about other stuff that was going against the grain of assumed norms in other ways too
So, parents seeing the watered down version of his reasoning and objecting to it, it makes sense they might just associate anything related to him as unwelcome too.
Yeah, big chunks of his ideas have been shown to function as he said now, but there's still academic criticism of some of it. Mostly down to flaws on a procedural level, or with some of the assumptions he made in formulating his ideas. But to anyone taking psych classes nowadays, he's at worst a little outdated, and often is seen as one of the more important figures in the field
I think people were a bit freaked out when he raised his first child with human contact, using his theories on behaviour modification on him.