Middle-class Israeli children from the city, kibbutzim, and moshavim, who had lost their fathers during war, participated with their mothers and teachers in a study aimed at assessing the short-range effect of the loss and of variables in the mother's approach and in the social-system organization on their adjustments. Boys were found to be more affected than girls; generally, kibbutz children were the least affected. The more concretistic-affectionate the mother's approach, and the more the child was perceived as similar to one of the parental figures (especially the idealized father figure), the more adjusted he or she appeared to be.