The Return of the Kibbutz Children

One of the interesting demographic questions is the connection between national identity and demography. Do societies engaged in a survival struggle display especially high fertility, or are family planning considerations separate from national considerations? Many attribute Israel’s high fertility to the national struggle, but this is far from certain. After all, if we exclude the Haredi sector that refuses to send its sons to the army, Jewish fertility would be far less impressive.

In the Jewish community before the establishment of the state, the fertility rate among the majority of secular Ashkenazi Jews was extremely low—clearly below two children per woman. Until the Holocaust, this did not cause demographic panic, despite the concerns about high Arab population growth. Jews expected that immigration to the Land of Israel would bolster their demographic strength. The question of the fertility of the few hundred thousand Jews living in Mandatory Palestine was seen as less significant. It is striking to read in historian Lilach Rosenberg-Friedman’s book how hostile the kibbutzim were to young women who wanted to start families. Another mouth to feed, without practical benefit, was regarded as a disaster.

Only during the war, when the Holocaust and its scope became known, did the Zionist leadership change its stance and begin to address demographic issues intensively. In David Ben-Gurion’s eyes, socialist settlements where few children were born were parasitic when they tried to rely on children from outside women. Indeed, from 1943 onward, there was a sharp rise in Jewish births. This phenomenon can also be explained economically—the improved economic situation laid the foundation for a baby boom throughout the Western world.

The secular Ashkenazi Jewish public, which formed the backbone of the Hebrew community in the Land of Israel, was at the forefront of values still identified today with low fertility—belief in equality, belief in women’s liberation, and distance from religion. Consequently, their fertility rate was among the lowest in the world at the time, and the fact that they were at the forefront of a national liberation struggle did not change this, at least not until the Holocaust. These were times without birth control pills, and women simply resorted to numerous abortions. One of the settlers remarked back then that the abortion budget was among the heaviest burdens on the overall settlement budget. Although abortions were forbidden under the British Mandate law, the Mandate authorities had little interest in adding more Jews to the land, so they did not bother to enforce the law. For those seeking an abortion, the only hurdle was the cost—and sometimes that expense was so prohibitive that, as the late Israeli politician and general Raphael Eitan (Raful) once remarked, not having enough money to pay the doctor was the very reason he was born.

Today—and indeed for many decades—kibbutzim have had relatively high birthrates compared to the secular socioeconomic group they belong to (currently around 2.5 children per woman, clearly above replacement level). This aligns with the general phenomenon of rural life leading to relatively high fertility. It is difficult to compare the abundance of current times with the desperate struggle in those early days; circumstances have changed significantly. Still, the rise in fertility may also reflect a universal historical cyclicality—low birthrates driven by ultramodern values are not eternal. Times and values are always in motion. And a simple evolutionary factor may be at play: whatever personality traits contributed to low fertility in the first generation would naturally appear less frequently in the second generation.