The Nomadic Alternative – Page 260

Nor can the Israeli Kibbutz system escape censure on these grounds.

"Loyalty to comrades" (chaverim) and the "magnificent instances of

heroism" reported of the youth of the kibbutzim result from drastic

modifications to 'normal' methods of rearing children. A child is

taken from the mother at the age of six weeks (i.e. before attach-

ment bonds have started to form) and placed in a nursery with six

others in the care of a Metapelet or group nurse. Though the child

is allowed to see its mother for a short period each day, the

'natural' bond between them has no opportunity to form. In this way,

to quote Melford E. Spiro, the "sensitive educational problem is

taken out of the subjective hands of the mother and entrusted to

the more objective and trained hands of a Metapelet." Heroism is

hardly surprising. It is probably automatic.

The egotistic child will adjust itself fearlessly to any new

situation providing distractions continue to amuse it. It compen-

sates for the loss of the mother by entertaining itself with things,

and its guardians praise its courage, tenacity and ingenious curi-

osity. It will cheerfully greet its returning mother, and even

offer her its affection providing she satisfies its need for new

presents to distract it. Parents, who have so traumatized their

children, receive 'cupboard love' in the measure of the things they

possess and are prepared to hand down through inheritance. Further-

more it is quite useless for those who airily declare war on private

property to imagine they can dump their children in institutions

while they go out and make the revolution. The child-rearing tech-

niques of some revolutionary states stand to create a line of the

most possession-conscious materially-minded men the world has ever

seen, thus negating the whole point of their revolution.

Parents do not teach their children to value and treasure material

possessions. They simply substitute for lost affection. Children

in their loneliness need things to run their fingers over, and with-

out them they would go mad. But a thing is only a thing, and there

are never enough to go round. For people attached to things, always

need new things. Things are inert and unchanging, whereas people