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A Glider Rocker For Your Baby’s Nursery
A glider rocker is a nice big cushioned chair with an extension for your feet to rest on, constructed in such a manner as to allow a swinging motion similar to that of a classic rocking chair. This kind of furniture is popularly used by parents for feeding babies (and of course rocking them to sleep). The construction of glider rockers makes them safer than traditional rocking chairs because any potential “pinch points” are off the floor.
The glider rocker is a popular feature of many a nursery, or dedicated baby’s bedroom. Other typical furnishings include a crib, or bed with safety rails surrounding it, and a changing table used to change diapers. Unlike them, however, gilder rockers are not necessarily designed specifically for use with children. Indeed, many such chairs comprise living room seating.
It is easy to see why. Kicking up one’s feet is immensely relaxing, especially after a hard day’s work on the feet! Even for office workers who are mostly sedentary, elevating the feet can help with blood pressure. There is also the enjoyable sensation of being in a fairly supine position without lying down all the way. Finally, there is the rocking or swinging motion, which seems oddly complementary to activities like reading, listening to the radio, or watching television.
A glider rocker is sometimes simply moved to the nursery. For example, the nursing mother may simply lay back in comfort, and easily create a soothing rocking sensation for her child. When the child grows up, the chair can resume its general service in the living room once more.
Glider rockers came out of the rocking chair, which invention is often credited to Benjamin Franklin though no known documentation to prove it exists. However, historians have been able to certify the furniture as an American original. Apparently they were used as garden seating in the early eighteenth century. Two hundred years later, portable folding models were made available. The familiar ski-shaped rockers appear to be of even more recent vintage, however, debuting with American craftsman Sam Maloof’s designs in the 1950s.
Also known as rockers, these chairs automatically tilt backwards toward the sitter’s center of gravity, granting an ergonomic benefit for free, so to speak. A variant known as platform rockers uses a spring base to achieve about the same effect. The glider rocker uses swinging braces.