Like most of the world, American families are not having enough children to replace themselves. Could Hutterites offer a model for having children that is more compatible with modern life?
"[American Hutterites…] are tradition-bound agricultural communities, deliberately shunning modern developments.
Yet the ultra-conservative, extremely devout Hutterites share with the socialist and atheistic kibbutzim one very striking feature: the children of both groups, reared communally in children’s homes by professional educators rather than by their families, grow up into adolescents and adults free of the asocial behaviors that worry us most—delinquency, criminality, sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, etc.
In general the incidence of severe emotional disturbance among them is extremely low as compared with our society at large. Perhaps more important, the Hutterite communities, like the radical Israeli kibbutzim, are “exceedingly effective in rearing their children to live up to the basic moral principles which they share with the larger society.”"