Perspectives on infant mental health from Israel: The case of changes in collective sleeping on the kibbutz

Collective sleeping of infants and young children on the Israeli kibbutz, which involved separations between young children and their parents at bedtime as well as unavailability of parents during the night, has been in practice for many decades until the recent past. Collective sleeping departed markedly from sleeping arrangements common in most cultures and violated well-accepted child-rearing norms. This article reviews research that points to collective sleeping of infants and young children as a risk factor in terms of the security of their attachments to their mothers and the intergenerational transmission of attachment. The broader infant mental health implications of the communal sleeping "story" are discussed, with a special emphasis on cultural "blind spots" regarding practices concerning infants, the central place of attachment-related protection and survival themes in the recent abandonment of collective sleeping, and implications for research.