From ‘Fighting Family’ to ‘Belligerent Families’: Family–Military–Nation Interrelationships and the Forming of Israeli Public Behavior among Families of Fallen Soldiers and Families of MIAs and POWs

The army–family relationship is vital for control by a state aware that the family is the central agent influencing their son to enlist. A historically ‘affectionate’ relationship prevailed between Israel's army and families. During and after the Yom Kippur War, families of captive and missing soldiers, and bereaved families, adopted ‘new’ social behaviors. They organized in an institutionalized manner, clashing with the establishment. Our research highlights the changing behavior patterns. Previously, Israel's ‘fighting family’ had applied a ‘hegemonic behavior model’. Families could process their loss privately, or publicly – as cultural agents committed to state values. After the war, many spurned that model and entered the public space, calling senior government officials ‘enemies’, ‘guilty’ of their plight. The new behavior fell on fertile ground: the declining traditional ‘network of elites’ and the burgeoning social-civil arena. Families of captive and MIA soldiers, and of fallen soldiers, adopted the trailblazing model. We first address theoretical aspects of ties between state and society, parenthood and family. Next we explore the ‘hegemonic model’ describing the pre-Yom Kippur War relationship between families and the establishment. We describe the ‘new’ behavior of two groups: families of captive and missing soldiers, and families of fallen soldiers. The state's co-opting of the family appears to be a regressive process, and the two institutions have begun operating competitively.     

The Importance of the Peer Group in the Israeli Kibbutz for Adult Attachment Style

This research was presented at the 2005 biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Atlanta, Georgia. The study is based on Yona Weiss's Ph.D. dissertation at the Smith College School for Social Work, directed by Robert Shilkret. We thank Joan Berzoff and Joyce Everett, members of the dissertation committee and all the adults from the kibbutzim who participated in the research. In this study we investigated attachment styles of kibbutz‐raised adults as related to their childhood experiences (392 adults from 50 kibbutzim). Various instruments were used to assess parental and group relations in childhood, adult attachment style, and adult attachment to groups. We found that there were similar distributions of attachment styles among those participants from familial and communal sleeping arrangements. Caring parents and peer groups were associated with secure adult attachment; further, caring peer groups were associated less frequently with insecure styles than less caring peer groups were. Caring peer groups partly compensated for less adequate care by parents. Higher overprotection by the peer group was associated with later social anxiety/ambivalence and personal preoccupation. We raise the question of how the child peer‐group supports or harms adult attachment style.