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Israel is a small, young country characterized by cultural diversity, with traditional family patterns alongside modern lifestyles. Founded 64 years ago, Israel has absorbed massive waves of immigration from more than 70 countries around the world (Lavee & Katz 2003), which have increased its population nine-fold. The country’s population numbers 7,837,000, approximately 75 % of whom are Jewish. The remainder are non-Jewish, primarily Arabs who comprise 20.5 % (Central Bureau of Statistics 2011). Since Israel is a young country with immigration dynamics, it combines influences of a traditional-collectivistic approach with a more western individualistic approach (Lissak 2009). Individualist and collectivist orientations implicate various psychological and childrearing differences (Bornstein et al. 2007). More individualist societies emphasize self-reliance, exploration, and independence, whereas more collectivist societies stress sensitivity to others, obedience, and obligation (Hofstede 2001; Scharf & Hertz-Lazarovitz 2003). In general, living in a developed, industrialized Western country, Israelis are similar to North Americans in their focus on individualistic values (Schwartz 1994). However, an important characteristic of Israeli society is related to its emphasis on communal values and practices and to the high value placed on the family (Lavee & Katz 2003) (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
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Map that includes Israel

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There are two unique features of Israeli society relevant to parenting. The first relates to its strong communal and familial values (Scharf & Mayseless 2010). Despite changes over the past decades, Israel has remained a highly familial and close-knit society, with more stable families than in most industrialized countries. Israelis nowadays marry later than in the past, but earlier than their counterparts in industrial societies (64.5 % of 25–29 year old males and 46.1 % of females are single), and the frequency of divorce is relatively lower (about 75 % remain married). Moreover, Israel is a “child-oriented” society (Lavee & Katz 2003), and is the only country in the world that provides almost unlimited, universal state funding for fertility treatments (Birnbaum-Carmeli 2009). On average, families have 2.98 children, and most Israelis (60 %) believe that “the greatest joy in life is to follow one’s children growing up”, and that life without children is an “empty life” (Lavee & Katz 2003). Close and frequent contact with family members, and especially with parents, is maintained throughout life (Scharf & Mayseless 2005).

The second feature relates to the stressful context that Israelis live in (Scharf & Mayseless 2010). Israel is a young country, and most of its citizens are either themselves new immigrants to the country, or second and third generation immigrants. Many immigrants came from Eastern Europe following the Holocaust, others as refugees from Arab countries. Themes of trauma and persecution are part of their experience. Furthermore, since its establishment, Israel has been constantly afflicted by the Israeli-Arab conflict: repeated wars, terrorist acts on both sides, and other security-related issues. A large majority of each cohort of 18-year-old Jewish youth serves a 2–3 year term of compulsory military service, and the majority of Israeli families has suffered personal injury or loss, or has close relatives or personal friends that have experienced these events (Milgram 1993). During the first two decades of existence the economic climate was difficult, and many Israelis suffered from poverty (Lissak 2010). This economic situation has changed and currently Israel, in general, enjoys a moderately good economic status. These familial-communal accents and stressful circumstances are reflected in parenting practices.

A large number of studies examining parenting have been conducted in Israel, some of which have examined several issues pertinent to the Israeli culture. For example, several studies examined parenting and war- or trauma-related issues, such as parenting style as a moderator of the effects of political violence (Slone et al. 2012), intergenerational effects of trauma from terror (Kaitz et al. 2009), parenting of adult children among ex-prisoners of war (Zerach et al. 2012), parenting among war veterans (Cohen et al. 2011) and the echoes of the trauma of Holocaust as reflected in parenting (Wiseman & Barber 2008; Sagi et al. 2003; Scharf 2007). Other studies focused on the effects of immigration on parenting and children’s adjustment (Atzaba-Poria 2011; Finzi-Dottan et al. 2011; Knafo et al. 2009; Roer-Strier et al. 2005; Glassman & Eisikovits 2006). Yet others examined the unique collective childrearing practices in the Kibbutz (Beit-Hallahmi & Rabin 1977; Maital & Bornstein 2003). Other studies examined cross-cultural differences, mainly between Jews and Arabs in Israel (Dwairy 2010; Feldman et al. 2001; Mikulincer et al. 1993).

Another body of research examined issues that might be less specific to the Israeli culture. Examples are intergenerational transmission of values (Knafo & Assor 2007) and parenting and future orientations (Seginer et al. 2004). Other studies examined bio-behavioral processes such as parenting and children’s sleep (Sadeh et al. 2010), heritability of children’s pro-social behavior and differential susceptibility to parenting (Knafo et al. 2011), oxytocin and the development of parenting in humans (Gordon et al. 2010), socio-emotional processes such as parenting and adolescents’ romantic relationships (Shulman et al. 2012; Scharf & Mayseless 2008), parenting and intimate friendships (Sharabany et al. 2008), or parenting insightfulness (Oppenheim & Koren-Karie 2012).

These studies will not be detailed here and interested readers may refer directly to the relevant articles. This chapter focuses on one specific prism to illustrate the interplay of culture and parenting in Israel. Specifically, two central dimensions of parenting are discussed that are manifested in a special way in the Israeli culture, particularly in adolescence: (a) relatedness as expressed in closeness between parents and children and (b) autonomy, as expressed in parental granting of autonomy and limit setting. These dimensions will be discussed within the unique context of Israeli society, implying high levels of stress, massive immigration and a strong familial culture. These issues will be illustrated with selected findings and examples from three large projects conducted with my colleagues, Ofra Mayseless and Inbal Kivenson-Baron, which examined parent-child relationships in Israel that are related to these themes.

Two of the projects are longitudinal studies that focused on the leaving home transition of male (Scharf et al. 2004) and female adolescents (Scharf et al. 2011) in Israel. In both studies the youngsters and their parents were followed for several years starting during their senior year in high school, using interviews and questionnaires pertaining to relationships with their parents.

The sample in the first study included 88 families that were well educated (80 % percent of the fathers and 74 % of the mothers had at least a college education). The adolescents and their parents were interviewed and completed questionnaires during the formers’ senior year in high school, approximately a year prior to conscription. Adolescents were administered the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI: George et al. 1985), and their parents were administered the Parenting Representations Interview – adolescence (PRI-A). Halfway through the sons’ military basic training period, the research team contacted two friends from the sons’ basic training units who knew the respondents well. These friends rated the participants’ coping and adjustment. Finally, during a furlough towards the end of the participants’ 3-year mandatory military service, 83 of the adolescents were interviewed regarding intimacy and completed questionnaires regarding individuation.

The second study included 120 late-adolescent girls, who were planning to start compulsory military service away from home. The families were recruited from middle-class neighborhoods and were mostly well educated (74 % of the fathers and 73 % of the mothers had at least a college education). At the first assessment the girls were administered the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI: George et al. 1985) and their mothers were administered the Parenting Representations Interview - adolescence (PRI-A). Additionally, the girls and their mothers participated separately in Revealed Differences family dyadic interaction tasks (Allen et al. 1994), which were videotaped at home. The next assessment took place 8–10 months following recruitment to military service. By this time the young women were already residing in their permanent placements, to which they had had the time to adapt. One hundred and fifteen (115) adolescents and 108 of their friends completed questionnaires regarding the adjustment of the former.

Centrality of Parents in Their Children Lives

In order to examine parents’ centrality in their emerging adult children, we focused on four specific questions from Hoffman’s PSI measure (Psychological Separation Inventory), which appear to reflect this centrality. The youngsters completed these questions in both projects. We constructed a scale we termed “parents forever” that included the following statements: “My parent is the most important person in the whole world”, “I wish to live close to my parent in the future”, “I love to spend most time with my parent when on vacation”, and “My parent is my best friend”.

A very large proportion (around 50 %) of youngsters perceives their mothers and fathers as the most important people in their lives. Similarly, more than a third of the youngsters wish to live close to their parents in the future (to a very high degree). Thus, a large proportion of these youngsters view their parents (in particular the mother) as highly central in their lives, both in the present and in the future.

Next we examined whether this heightened centrality is positive or negative as reflected in other domains of sons’ and daughters’ functioning. Quite a clear picture emerged, though the correlations were small to moderate in their magnitude. “Parents are forever” scales were positively associated with functioning during high school, basic training and at the end of the 3-year mandatory military service. This was revealed in the young men’s own perceptions of their functioning and their self-perceptions, as well as in the reports of their peers. Similarly to young men, young women with high levels of parent centrality revealed better psychosocial functioning during the senior high school year and during their military service, according to their evaluations as well as those of their peers.

During our interviews the parents of these emerging adults were asked about the place of their children in their lives, and their perspective regarding future relationships with their adult children. It appears that parents, too, are highly invested in their children and expect them to stay close by and continue to have a daily connection. Responding to the interviewer’s question: “When you try to imagine your daughter ten years from now, how do you see her”?, one mother answered, “She is in my home all the time, and I’m in her home all the time …..I hope she will not draw away and that she will visit a lot. I’m sure; she already said she will not separate, so it’s O.K. Our relationship (ten years later) will be close-close. They will become close again. Because at the beginning she will leave home, after she will have children then we’ll be close again”.

Another mother answered, “I see our relationship in the future ten years from now as the relationship I had with my mother…. I loved going a lot to their home, it is a warm home. I hope that here too my daughter will have a warm home… I hope, I know that it will be a warm home and that she’ll always want to come back and be here. From another side, she will be at her home and I’ll help her, I know it is essential in the period, actually in all the periods, so she can build herself. It is important. Lifetime children build themselves”.

Describing their relationships 10 years in the future another mother of a son said that their relationship would be, “Wonderful, just wonderful. I built our relationship that way. I don’t expect that it will be different even if he will have a wife. I don’t expect it to be different because I’ll get along with her too so as not to miss my son”. Still another mother said, “Our relationship will be excellent. I’ll be the best grandmother in the world, and she will bring her children a lot, and I’ll volunteer every weekend that they will come to me, eat together, leave their children and will go out to have fun”.

In sum, though processes of “letting go” could be identified in the parents, the relationships with young adults relationships remained important and central to both parents and children. In fact, this constant close bond is characteristic of many Israeli families. These findings underscore the uniqueness of Israeli culture in preserving the central role of these relationships in this developmental stage of emerging adulthood. Possibly the relatively collectivistic orientation and the stressful environmental circumstances promote and maintain the high centrality of this parent-child bond beyond childhood, adolescence and even young adulthood, and reflect their continuous centrality throughout the life span.

Parenting Representations and Offspring’s Psychosocial Functioning

Parents perceive, understand and interpret their children’s personality and behavior through the lens of parenting representations. These representations influence parents’ accessibility to emotions and thoughts and subsequently their behavior toward their children. Parenting representations were studied using interviews modeled on the Adult Attachment Interview. In both studies we examined the associations between mothers’ parenting representations of their adolescents and their adolescents’ attachment representations, and adolescents’ functioning, from their own perspective and that of others – concurrently and longitudinally. We also assessed fathers’ representations, but the analysis of their interviews has not yet been completed. Additionally, we used mothers’ and fathers’ self-reports from questionnaires pertaining to closeness and autonomy dimensions.

Parents’ Measures

Parents are asked to give a general description of their relationships with their children and support this description with specific incidents from childhood and adolescence. The interview included questions regarding experiences of closeness, pain, guilt, anger, worry, discipline and children’s increasing autonomy, and the way that parents address these situations. In addition, the parents were requested to describe how they see their children in the future, and their anticipated future relationships with them.

In this chapter we focus on three scales from the parent-adolescent relationships domain. Positive feelings represent the relatedness dimension in the mother-adolescent relationship and refer to the extent to which the parent describes his/her relationship with the child as characterized by acceptance, warmth and affection. Two scales represent the autonomy dimension: granting of autonomy and monitoring. Granting of Autonomy refers to the extent to which the parent facilitates autonomous decision-making and behavior, balanced with adequate support according to the situation and the child’s developmental stage. The scale reflects tolerance for different opinions, as well as the child’s privacy and the encouragement of the child’s independent activities and reasoning. Monitoring refers to the extent to which the parent exerts behavioral control over the child, knows where the child spends his/her free time and who his/her friends are, and is aware of his/her functioning in school and other settings.

Adolescent Measures

Participants were requested to give a general description of their relationships with their parents and support these descriptions with specific biographical incidents. Using several scales, scores were assigned to inferred childhood experiences of love, rejection, involvement of each parent, and to the respondent’s state of mind (SoM) with respect to attachment.

Results

Looking at mothers’ interviews, positive feelings are associated with attachment variables, adolescents’ wellbeing, romantic intimacy, differentiation of self and peer reports. Granting autonomy is associated with less involvement and higher levels of individuation, whereas monitoring is associated with the attachment variables, and with romantic intimacy and individuation. Fathers’ reports regarding acceptance and the encouragement of independence are associated with most indicators, whereas mothers’ reports regarding acceptance are associated with attachment variables, wellbeing and individuation, and mothers’ encouragement of independence is associated with most of the sons’ indicators. Thus, both relatedness and autonomy contribute to sons’ psychosocial functioning. Interestingly, romantic intimacy is associated mainly with parenting autonomy-related dimensions.

Looking at mothers’ interviews, positive feelings and monitoring are associated with all indicators (monitoring is not associated with daughters’ behaviors toward mothers), and granting autonomy is associated with most AAI scales and with autonomy-relatedness behaviors of mothers and daughters. Looking at parents’ reports, mothers’ reports are associated with love and rejection scales, wellbeing and friends’ reports on distress. Mothers’ closeness is also associated with their own autonomy-relatedness behaviors in interaction and with their daughters’ wellbeing. Fathers’ reports on closeness and monitoring are associated with their friends’ report on distress, as well as with their own autonomy-relatedness behaviors toward daughters. Thus, generally, more mothers’ variables are associated with girls’ psychosocial functioning.

Relatedness and autonomy in parent-youngster relationships are associated with better adjustment concurrently and longitudinally, with no distinct predictions of the autonomous or relatedness dimensions in relationships on specific psychosocial domains. It appears that these two dimensions facilitate better adjustment.

Adolescent’s Views Regarding Parental Authority

The third project focused on parental authority and its implications for adolescents’ adjustment in the educational systems (Scharf & Mayseless 2005). The sample consists of 3,496 8th and 11th graders (1,884 girls; 53.9 %) representing the various socio-economical strata in the Israeli education system. Adolescents completed questionnaires pertaining to their relationships with their parents. In addition, adolescents, their teachers, and their peers reported on adolescents’ adjustment. We found that the majority of youth (70 %) reported relationships with parents that were characterized by high closeness, expressed in a sense of acceptance, openness and trust. However, half these youth reported that this close relationship is combined with low monitoring, low limit setting and low enforcement of rules by their parents. About 30 % of them experience closeness and warmth in relationships with parents in conjunction with indulgence and leniency. This parental indulgence was found to be associated with a sense of “royalty” among youth; they “deserve” what they want without their parents’ demand for reciprocity. Thus, many youngsters believe that “the main role of parents is to indulge their children and fulfill their requests”, or agree that “it seems too much for me to be involved in tasks at home when my day is so busy”. Additionally, 20 % of Israeli adolescents report moderate closeness to their parents, while also reporting parental intrusiveness, guilt inducing, and psychological control. These findings were similar across different socio-economic backgrounds, adolescent ages, and other demographic characteristics. Thus, although closeness is a prevalent characteristic of parent-adolescent relationships, the findings also reveal two different profiles of less adequate parenting that might affect the functioning of youth in the school system.

The functioning of youth who experience involved and intrusive parenting was found problematic, especially in externalizing behaviors such as violence and delinquency. However, these adolescents were also more vulnerable to violence as victims, and they had high levels of anxiety, depression, ADHD, and somatic problems (Scharf & Mayseless 2005).

Experiencing indulgent parenting comprised of warmth without adequate monitoring and control does not necessarily lead to serious problems of violence, but is a significant risk factor for less severe problems of discipline such as vandalism, disruptive behavior and difficulties in school. Lack of parental response to problem behavior might be perceived as positive reinforcement. Additionally, easy discipline problems often reflect difficulty regulating emotions and behaviors. The parent–child relationship is the main arena in which children acquire and develop emotional regulation skills.

Several suggestions for these parenting characteristics have been offered (Scharf & Mayseless 2005). Possibly this reduced parental authority and heightened permissiveness reflect processes pertaining to child centeredness that are taking place in Israeli society (Almog & Watzman 2004). Children’s needs, self-actualization and happiness are essential, and parents feel obliged to promote these goals. This change in educational ideology makes it difficult to exert parental authority, and parents tend to please their children rather than discipline them. Parents themselves experienced relatively strict parenting in their own childhood and want to spare their children these difficulties. In their desire to correct unfavorable experiences they go too far and give their children too much freedom, or rarely enforce parental authority (Scharf & Mayseless 2005).

Parental permissiveness might also result from parents’ desire to allow their children a good life and not frustrate or upset them, assuming that life in Israel is difficult and dangerous enough, and there is no knowing what the following day will bring. Possibly this threat to security, whether in the context of acts of terrorism or in relation to military service, and the feeling that life in Israel will be difficult and stressful for young people when they grow up, compels parents to avoid confrontation with children, as may be required by exerting parental authority. Possibly parents make special efforts to make their children happy, since the future is expected to be difficult and unforeseen (Scharf & Mayseless 2005).

Furthermore, in the context of high geopolitical uncertainty, it is not entirely clear how to plan for the future, or to know the best ways to succeed in life. In this case it is preferable not to set clear goals and unequivocal rules for behavior, as the future is unpredictable. It is possible that as a parental strategy (not necessarily conscious), parents choose to educate their children to be flexible, to improvise and to get along, rather than educating them to be obedient, which is not necessarily compatible with the unpredictable, frequently changing world. This uncertain and dangerous context might also explain the relatively high levels of involvement and intrusiveness. When the world is perceived as dangerous and chaotic, it may be a good parental strategy to raise children to remain close to their parents to allow their parents to protect them as long as this protection is required.

Finally, parents might also avoid using their authority due to feelings of guilt. Many families in Israel are dual career couples, and parents spend a lot of time away from home at work. Because parents feel guilty for not spending sufficient time with their children, they do not want to frustrate or annoy them. Moreover, parents’ work leaves little time and energy to invest in parenting in general, and in monitoring in particular, as this requires constant supervision. It is probably more difficult to exert parental authority when parents are highly involved and close to their children.

Concluding Remarks

Culture plays an important part in the ways different child rearing practices are perceived by both parents and children and may affect children’s outcomes differently. In this chapter the focus is on autonomy and relatedness in parent-child relationships.

Keller and her colleagues (Keller et al. 2009) refer to two different parenting strategies that are already revealed in infancy. The proximal parenting style, which is expressed in physical contact and body stimulation, is prevalent in traditional subsistence societies where socialization goals that emphasize relatedness, obedience, and hierarchy are preferred (Kagitcibasi 2005). The proximal parenting style bolsters closeness and warmth and is related to early development of compliance. The distal parenting style is characterized by communication from a distance and object stimulation, and is prevalent in Western middle-class families where competition, individual achievements, and self-enhancement are preferred socialization goals.

It appears that these parenting strategies are also relevant to parenting of children beyond infancy and childhood, and that, in general, Israeli parents favor proximal parenting. This strategy might be more adequate in collectivistic cultural contexts, and is particularly crucial in dangerous and unpredictable environments where physical proximity to parents could ensure protection and survival (Simpson & Belsky 2008). As revealed in our findings, closeness to parents, and even heightened centrality of parents, is indeed associated with favorable outcomes. In a similar vein, Korean adolescents who report higher family enmeshment had higher self-esteem (Chun & MacDermid 1997), and African American adolescents displaying greater emotional autonomy showed more behavioral problems and lower academic achievements (Fuhrman & Holmbeck 1995). Generally, in western societies emotional autonomy is associated with better adjustment. Likewise, Italian adolescents reporting greater family enmeshment did not experience more depressive symptoms or anxiety as they approached the transition from secondary school (Manzi et al. 2006). Manzi and colleagues suggested that given the high involvement prevailing in Italian family culture, these characteristics may not have been experienced as blurring interpersonal boundaries or limiting personal autonomy and, therefore, were not associated with adverse outcomes. Thus, it appears that the high levels of closeness prevalent in Israeli culture are beneficial for both parents and their offspring.

However, it is clear that Israeli children do not favor obedience and hierarchy, and there are indications that parents, too, do not necessarily promote these qualities in their offspring. This resembles findings by Keller et al. (2009) demonstrating that parents from urban educated families, in cultures with a more inter-dependent history, use both proximal and distal parenting strategies. These societies, including the Israeli society, are industrial, competitive societies and therefore promoting autonomy is an important element in raising children to succeed.

The ambivalent attitude toward authority is also reflected in other domains of life and in Israeli attitudes toward authority figures and institutions. How can this be interpreted? The geopolitical circumstances of Israel might promote a less authoritarian style in order to raise creative and flexible children who could adapt to future challenging situations. Studies also demonstrated the complex outcomes of immigration on family dynamics (Strier & Roer-Strier 2010), such as parental loss of authority and strong conflict between traditional and more liberal and democratic child rearing practices.

Psychological interpretations might also be relevant. Parents construct their role based on their subjective experiences with their own parents, examining what they received from their parents and what they needed and wanted but did not receive (Osherson 1986). This might culminate in greater indulgence, leniency and closeness in their parenting. According to Brazelton & Cramer (1990), parents’ fantasies, expectations and inner conflicts mediate the interaction between them and their children. They suggest that parents may attempt to establish exactly the opposite type of relationship with their children to that which they had with their own parents. Thus, a strict disciplinary experience may lead parents to be unwilling to impose any limits on their children, or cause them frustration. This may result in the child’s inability to delay gratification, as well as in demanding behavior by the children. Parents may not be aware that they have actually reconstructed their past relationships and are again living in an authoritarian climate in which, this time, the role of their own parents is taken on by their children (Scharf & Shulman 2006).

A quote from the Israeli satirical writer Efraim Sidon demonstrates the special bond between Israeli parents and their children. “What does an Israeli child have in his life? His parents and his parents and his parents, and his parents. And day and night they chase him, breathe down his neck and follow in his tracks … Because they will find him everywhere … Twenty-two years old or twenty-five, thirty years old, or fifty. There is no escape from his worried parents. Even if he lands on the moon or flies to Mars, they will follow him with a cake and warm clothes…”.