Toward a Framework for Developing Children's Locus-of-Control Orientation: Implications from the Kibbutz System

Abstract

LIFSHITZ, MICHAELA, and RAMOT, LOTEH. Toward a Framework for Developing Children's Locus-of-Control Orientation: Implications from the Kibbutz System. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1978, 49, 85-95. The study explored the extent to which the development of children's locus of control (LC) is affected by differing levels of antecedent parental contact in combination with differing educational ideologies and practices. The sample consisted of 330 children (ages 14 and 17) and their parents from the 3 major kibbutz movements. Results indicated that by the time early adolescence is reached, LC has stabilized. Subjects, especially girls, raised in kibbutzim characterized by a greater degree of authoritarian educational methods combined with intimate early contacts with parents (familial sleeping arrangement) were found to be less internal than those who had been raised under an ideology espousing more peer-group autonomy and lesser contacts with parents (communal sleeping arrangement). In addition, parents' LC had a greater effect on the LC of the communal-sleeping-arrangement subjects in a cross-sex complementary manner. It is suggested that parents in a communal sleeping arrangement hold a higher reward value for their children and thus are more influential in the development of their children's LC than are parents in a familial sleeping arrangement.