The kibbutz as a social experiment and as a child-rearing laboratory.

Abstract

The Israeli has attracted the attention of social scientists, especially psychologists, as a unique social experiment that offers a laboratory for studying the effects of variations in child rearing on development. This article reviews (a) the history of the movement and child- rearing practices and (b) the results of research in kib- butz socialization. The research indicates that the kibbutz personality is essentially nonpathological and effective. Recent changes in child-rearing patterns in the kibbutz, in the form of a return to traditional family child rearing, are viewed as part of overall social change pattern that is likely to continue in the future. Implications for further work are discussed. Martin Buber (19S8) called the an ex- periment that did not fail. He did so after going over the history of Western Utopian movements, all of which had as their central idea the commune, a relatively small social unit that would serve as the building block for the ideal society of the future. Since the beginning of the 19th century, various attempts have been made to found com- munes, but most of these, being little more than isolated groups of fervent believers even during their usually brief periods of existence, have failed. So far, the most successful attempt at building a Utopian commune has been the Israeli kibbutz. In addition to being a social experiment—an ex- periment in Utopia—the has been regarded as a psychological experiment, that is, as a labora- tory for testing hypotheses regarding child-rearing practices and their consequences (Rabin, 19S7). The interest shown by social scientists in the kib- butz has been similar to that shown in other social experiments that combined changes in social in- stitutions with new patterns of child rearing, such as those in contemporary China and Cuba. We present here a brief history of the and the changes it has undergone, together with a survey of psychological studies of child rearing in the kib- butz, in order to make psychologists more con- scious of the complexity of the current situation and its implications for psychological research.