Family and Communally Raised (Kibbutz) Children 20 Years Later: Biographical Data

Abstract

Two groups of individuals, one made up of persons raised in the kibbutz communal system, and the other of persons raised in traditional families, who had been first studied in 1955 as part of a comparative research project, were studied again twenty years later. The follow-up study included 146 individuals, amounting to 85% of the original groups, whose average age in 1975 was around 30. The two groups were compared on several aspects of psychosocial functioning, such as place of résidence, work, marital status, military service and psychosomatic symptoms. The similarities and the differences between the two groups are discussed in the context of the two respective child rearing systems.