Political Orientation, Social Reality, and Child Welfare

A study of child welfare programs in the USSR, the Israeli kibbutz, Poland & Yugoslavia as determined by pol'al orientation & soc realities; first presented as a paper at the Nat'l Conference on Soc Welfare in Los Angeles in May 1964 as part of a long-term project on group care in several societies. It is posited that pol'al ideology & soc reality predetermine societies toward individual vs group care. Increasingly, the tendency is to provide instit'al programs for children wherever the fam fails to take care of them, & ideology is modified & sometimes reinforced by soc reality, eg, housing problems & employment of women. Group care can take a number of forms, more or less familial, more or less peer-centered, more or less community-integrated & independent from the community. Expected results also vary, & the meaning of group care ranges from highly desirable to nearly unacceptable. From an examination of child care in communities enumerated above, a feeling of 'guarded optimism' emerges, though it does not apply equally to all types of setting. The impact of a strong collective seems to be best expressed in the self-contained Sch's of the USSR & the kibbutz. The open, agegraded instit's of Yugoslavia, Poland & Israel, while providing a measure of security & safety, do not appear to give the stimulus, the excitement, & the hope of the future of their self-contained counterparts. It is concluded that these educ'al exp's merit a more continued & careful study in the US. I. Langnas.