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Did Skinner raise his daughter in a Skinner box?
John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner
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Skinner also developed a form of crib/playpen that he termed an “air crib” (also called a “baby-tender” or an “heir conditioner”). This was a large, well-lit and temperature-controlled chamber for a small child. He raised his second daughter Deborah in this chamber for the first few years of her life. Contrary to popular thought, this was not a classic Skinner box, where rats have to press levers to obtain food; it was more like a roomy bassinet. Although critics assumed his daughter had been damaged by a bizarrely technical approach to child rearing, Skinner always maintained that his daughter had not suffered and had, in fact, grown up to be a well-adjusted, college-educated artist.