Institutionalisation

• Why were the Romanian orphan studies conducted?

  • President Nicolai Ceausescu stopped women (under 40 with less than four children) from using contraception or having an abortion
  • Many couldn’t afford to keep their children
  • Went to huge orphanages in very poor conditions.
  • Children were adopted to the Britain or Canada.
• What did Rutter 2010 do?

  • 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain –Wanted to test what extent good care could make up for poor early experiences.
  • Some adopted before 6 months, others all adopted before 4.
  • Physical, cognitive, and emotional development was assessed at age 4, 6, 11 & 15y.
• What were the findings of Rutter’s study?

  • When they got to the Uk, half of the adoptees showed signs of mental retardation + were severely undernourished.
  • Age 11 -> mean IQ for orphans adopted before 6 months was 102
  • 86 for those adopted between 6 months & 2 years
  • 77 for those adopted after 2 years.
  • Differences still there at age 16 (Beckett et al)
  • Adopted after 6 months-> signs of disinhibited attachment, adopted Before 6 months rarely shows signs
• What were the conclusions of Rutter’s study ?

  • Supports Bowlby’s view:
  • There is a sensitive period
  • A failure to form an attachment before the age of 6 months (and after the age of 2 years) appears to have long-lasting effects
• What is Zenah et al’s study called?

  The Bucharest Early Intervention Project
• What did Zenah et al do?

  • 95 children - aged 12-31 months
  • They had spent most of their lives in institutional care
  • Compared to a control group - 50 children that had never been institutionalised
  • Their attachment type was measured using the strange situation + carers were asked about unusual social behaviours.
• What did Zenah et al find?

  • 74% of the control group were securely attached
  • 19% of the institutionalised group were securely attached
  • 65% of the institutionalised group showed disorganised attachment.
  • 44% of the institutionalised groups were disinhibited attachment type
• What is physical underdevelopment? (study)

  Gardner (1972) found that a lack of emotional care leads to deprivation dwarfism.
• What is meant by damage to intellectual development?

  Cognitive development is affect by emotional deprivation (can be reversed if adopted before 6 months)
• What is the disinhibited attachment type ?

  • A form of insecure attachment where a child will treat a stranger with inappropriate familiarity and may be attention seeking.
  • E.g. so used to having different people care for them that they react to stranger like they are old friends ( may hug a stranger )
• What did Quinton do regarding poor parenting?

  • Compared a group of 50 women brought up in institutions with a control group (brought up at home).
  • In their 20's women raised in institutions experienced extreme difficulties acting as parents
  • Their children went on to spend time in care
• Define institutionalisation

  The effects of living in an institution
• Real World Application (+ age of adoption)

  • Today most babies are to be adopted in the first couple of weeks of birth
  • This is because children and adoptive mothers as just as securely attached as non-adoptive families.
• Real World Application (+ children's homes)

  • Helped children's homes
  • Making sure caregiver to child ratio is a lot smaller
  • Assigning a key worker to enable normal attachments to develop.
  • Means that children in institutional care have a chance to develop normal attachments and disinhibited attachment is avoided
• Strength- Fewer confounding variables

  • There were many orphan studies before the Romanian orphans study
  • Neglect, abuse and bereavement made it hard to observe the effects of institutionalisation in these studies
  • The children were affected by these confounding variables
  • Rutter’s study has fewer confounding variables
  • So we can be fairly sure that differences in institutionally-cared-for children are the rest of this type of care (high internal validity)
• Weakness - confounding variables counter point

  • Quality of care was so poor- makes it hard to separate effects of institutional care from those of poor institutional care (E.g. neglect)
  • So internal validity might not be better than in previous studies after all.
• Weakness -> Lack of data on adult development


  • Too soon to say for certain whether children suffered permanent effects because we only have data on their development up to their early twenties
  • It will be a while before we have info about some key research questions (e.g. orphans’ ability to form and maintain romantic relationships + their parenting)
  • So the Romanian orphan studies have not yet yielded their most important findings, some children may still ‘catch up’
• Neither strength nor weakness - Social Sensitivity 


  • Late-adopted children were shown to have low IQ
  • This may affect how they are treated by parents and teachers and might create a self-fulfilling prophecy
  • However- a lot has been learned from the Romanian orphan studies that might benefit future institutionalised or potentially institutionalised children
  • Potential benefits of the studies probably outweigh their social sensitivity