Institutionalisation

• Rutter's Romanian Orphan Study showed that attachments could form after the critical period, contradicting Bowlby's theory
• • Study suggests long-term consequences may be less severe if children have the opportunity to form attachments
• Give three effects of institutionalisation.

  • poor peer interactions
  • disinhibited attachment
  • mental retardation
• During the 1990s, horrific images flooded the news of children in poor conditions in Romanian orphanages.

  The former Romanian president had required Romanian women to have 5 children.

  However, many of the parents could not afford to keep their children and so many children ended up in large orphanages, where they were kept in poor conditions and received little in the way of emotional care.
• • 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻:
  • The term relates to living in an institutional setting, like a hospital or an orphanage
  • People can live in an institution for long, continuous periods of time and there is very little emotional care
• 𝙋𝙍𝙊𝘾𝙀𝘿𝙐𝙍𝙀:

  • Rutter et al. (2011) conducted a longitudinal study on 165 Romanian orphans adopted by British parents 
  • Group 1: 58 children under the age of 6 months 
  • Group 2: 59 children between the ages of 6 and 24 months 
  • Group 3: 48 children over 48 months 
  • Group 4:  52 British adoptees who were the control group
  • Each group was assessed at the ages of 4, 6, 11 and 15
  • At the start of the observations, over half of the Romanian children were suffering from severe malnutrition and a low IQ, showing delayed intellectual development, compared to the control group
• 𝙁𝙄𝙉𝘿𝙄𝙉𝙂𝙎:

  • Those adopted after 6 months showed disinhibited attachment (overly friendly behaviour towards unknown adults) 
  • 54% of those children who were adopted after 6 months still showed disinhibited attachment at age 11
  • Those adopted before 6 months, showed signs of a secure 'normal' attachment
  • Those older than 6 months displayed disinhibited attachment
  • At age 11 there was a significant difference between children adopted before 6 months and those adopted later in terms of attachment style and IQ
• Symptoms of disinhibited attachment include attention-seeking, clinginess and social behaviour directed indiscriminately towards all adults, whether familiar or unfamiliar.
• 𝘾𝙊𝙉𝘾𝙇𝙐𝙎𝙄𝙊𝙉𝙎:

  • Adoption after the first 6 months of life means the child will have longer-term effects of institutionalisation
  • However, recovery is possible if children can form attachments (they may have slower development rather than irreversible damage)
  • This finding challenges Bowlby's Theory of Maternal Deprivation as Rutter shows recovery is possible
  • It has been found that children as old as 9 or 10 made a good recovery if they were adopted by sensitive, loving parents
• Studies on institutionalisation are referring to privation but you must make a link to an institution in your response i.e. an orphanage or children's home.
• Due to research on institutions and the negative effects they have, policy changes were made to benefit children; for example, children's homes now avoid having large numbers of caregivers for each child and instead now have one or two 'key workers' who play a central role in their emotional care.
• In the Romanian orphans study there is a lack of confounding variables. The Romanian orphans had, in the main, been handed over by loving parents who could not afford to keep them.
• Children were not randomly allocated to conditions in this study, which means the more sociable children could have been adopted first.
• This study could lack external validity as the quality of care was so poor in Romanian orphanages that it cannot be compared to others. This means the harmful effects seen in the studies of Romanian orphans may represent the effects of poor institutional care rather than institutional care in general.
• There is a current lack of adult data on adult development. The latest data only looks at children in their early to mid-20s
• Hodges and Tizard (1989) stated the adverse effects of institutionalisation could be reversed if children were adopted by effective families or had adequate care. They found children who had been adopted by adequate families, often, coped better on measures of behavioural and peer relationships than those children returned to their biological families.