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The Heir Conditioner
The LARB Quarterly, issue no. 44, “Pressure,” presents an excerpt from Hannah Zeavin’s “Mother Media.”
In 1945, he reported in Ladies’ Home Journal about the experience of designing the air crib, in an article appropriately titled “Baby in a Box,” again an implicit denaturing of maternal care (a subsequent profile appeared in LIFE magazine in 1947). In response to what remained, they began “gadgeteering,” addressing several problems of child-rearing such as frequent laundry, self-amusement, and cleanliness (for example, the sheet was replaced with a roll of material that, when soiled, could be advanced, keeping the crib fresh and clean with just the turn of a crank). By February 1948, Skinner estimated that over 100 of his correspondents had made air cribs at home using his mailed-out specifications; Robert Topper, a psychologist at Emory University, was helping manufacture them for parents in the South; and one company had produced several for the wealthy in Los Angeles.
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