The NY Times Magazine printed a pretty good article yesterday about modern design for children - The Modernist Nursery by Elizabeth Weil. It focuses on Melissa Pfeiffer (founder of Modernseed) and her family, as well as designers David Netto and Michael Ryan. The article didn't really offer any revelations (other than there are going to be a bunch of new cribs coming out), but it's nice to see the subject matter getting some attention. The only thing I had a problem with was in this passage:
Contemporary design for kids is really contemporary design for adultswho have procreated. In choosing juvenile products that are less babylike, you could even say that adults not only shift focus away from the youngster as dependent child but also from themselves as parents, playing out the fantasy that Mom, Dad, plus Junior are just cool cats sharing a pad. This illusion is not necessarily bad...
Hey, like it or not the whole family has to live with our children's stuff, and it's great for juvenile products to be babylike, just not ugly. As far as I'm concerned there isn't any reason why "babylike" and "contemporary design" have to be mutually exclusive. It might not always be easy (or affordable) to meld the two, but with stores like Modernseed and designers like David Netto it's getting easier every day. I'm a parent who loves his "dependent child," a dependent child who is also a cool cat sharing our pad. I don't have time to play out fantasies.