The Ecology of Collaborative Child Rearing: A Systems Approach to Child Care on the Kibbutz SHAPONE L. MAITAL MARC H. 6ORNSTEIN ABSTRACT Collective child rearing on the Israeli kibbutz serves as a model for articulating changes in patterns offamilial and nonfamilial child rearing associated with cultural change. Kibbutz children, like other children with working parents, are cared for by multiple caregivers in multiple settings. Historically, kibbutz child care has been communally run in keeping with the collective beliefs and organization of the setting. As collective practices have been relaxed, the contemporary kibbutz children's house has been likened to other day care arrangements. In this article, we examine the process of change in collective child- care arrangements on kibbutz as a dynamic system involving patterns of reciprocal relations among parts of a collaborative- child-care system. Influences of the views of developmental ex- perts and economic forces impact reciprocal relations among the physical and social setting, changing practices, and beliefs of kibbutz members. A system dynamics approach turns our focus to feedback loops among parts of the eco-cultural child-care niche rather than developmental outcomes resultingfrom staticfeatures of kibbutz and other child-care arrangements. Contrasting dif- ferent feedback systems points to cultural conditions under which some stability in demand for collective child care may be maintained, as compared with conditions that might lead to the demise of collective child care. The difference between day care systems . . . and the kibbutz (communal settlements) system is, in most cases in their connections with the surrounding community. Generally, day care is a system for substitute care and not a part of interlocking community systems. . .. The evaluation qfany child-rearing situation has to be done in the context qf the total community. —Rabin and Beit-Hallahml 1982:190-191, emphasis added Ettios 31 (2):274-306. Copyright <0 2003. American Anthropological Association.