Personal choices of kibbutz children in simulated situations of distress and joy

Nine hundred and ninety-eight kibbutz children aged 3 to 10 years were asked to indicate their personal choices in response to a projective test depicting a child in situations of distress and joy. The children selected their own parents as the most significant choice in all age groups, irrespective of the communal or family type of sleeping arrangement. This finding appears to confirm the contention that the family constitutes a primary emotional center for kibbutz children despite the fact that parents do not function as providers of material needs, and that children grow up in communal houses with a housemother responsible for childcare tasks usually associated with the mother in the nuclear family model.