Kibbutzim

Children's Houses

Kibbutzim in Israel originally reared all children communally in Children's Houses. The children would live in the Children's House only seeing their parents for a few hours after work. The Children's Houses were staff by dedicated personal from amongst the kibbutz members. It isn't clear how kibbutzim dealt with these staff having children.

The Children's Houses were ultimately a failure and rarely survived more than one generation in most kibbutzim. Virtually all adults brought up in a Children's House demanded that their children live them rather than in the Children's House.

In addition, many of the people brought up in Children's Houses together treated each other as siblings. In a kibbutz, where many people born on the kibbutz are expected to stay and run it as adults, this presented a serious problem as they would not form romantic relationships with each other. Since it is easier to leave a kibbutz than it is to marry an outsider and bring them in, the net result was to cause people to leave the kibbutzim, threatening the future viability of the kibbutzim.

The use of Children's Houses ended during the 1970s.