“They’re Still So Young”: Kibbutz Parents Coping with Their Adolescent Children’s Normative Home Leaving

Abstract

The current qualitative study focused on the experience of adolescents' parents, coping with their children’s relatively early home leaving. The study was designed to evaluate whether there are distinct characteristics of parents' reaction to empty nest when the leaving home occurs under normative circumstances during adolescence.

The study population included 15 participants (8 mothers, 7 fathers) who live on kibbutzim, where the children are expected to leave their parents' home at age 15 and live in a regional residential school. The participants were interviewed in semi-structured open interviews about the difficulties and benefits of their children’s home leaving. Findings suggest that in addition to the positive and negative feelings that the parents experience, they are also specifically concerned about their children's unique developmental stage – that of identity formation.