Doctors and Parents in Children's Wards: Tel-Hashomer Hospital's Unrestricted Visitations in 1950s' Israel

In this paper, we explore the acceptance of parents into children's wards in Tel-Hashomer Hospital, an important foundation of Israel's health system. In 1953, Tel-Hashomer was the first hospital in Israel to conduct an experimental programme of minimum separation between children and their parents, influenced by the theory of British psychoanalyst and psychiatrist John Bowlby. Tel-Hashomer medical staff encouraged parents to stay long hours near the bedsides of their daughters and sons, which led to a notable change in the ward's daily routine. Eventually, parents became an inseparable part of the ward. This tendency to embrace and welcome parents into the wards was especially surprising when one considers that many of these parents were of Mizrahi origin and suffered an orientalist, racialised stigma of unfit parenting.