Romanian Orphans and the Effects of Institutionalisation

• Procedure


  1. 165 Romanian orphans who spent their early lives in institutions- suffered institutionalisation

  2. 111 were adopted before the age of 2 years and 54 by the age of 4

  3. Tested at regular intervals (4,6,11,15) to assess their physical, cognitive and social development

  4. Info also gathered in interviews with parents and teachers

  5. Progress compared to a control group of 52 British children adopted before the age of 6 months
• Other studies of Romanian orphans
• Le Mare and Audet: Reported the findings from a longitudinal study of 36 Romanian orphans adopted to families in Canada- differences in physical growth and health and were physically smaller compared to a matched control group at age 4, difference had disappeared by 10.5 years which was true for physical health- recovery is possible from the effects of institutionalisation
• Zeanah: Compared 136 Romanian children who had spent 90% of their lives in an institution compared to a control of Romanian children who had never been in an institution, children were aged 12-31 months and were assessed in the Strange Situation- institutionalised children showed signed of disinhibited attachment
• Effects of institutionalisation


  • Physical underdevelopment: children in institutionalised care are usually physically small and research has shown that lack of emotional care rather than poor nourishment is the cause of deprivation dwarfism
  • Intellectual understanding: cognitive development is also affected by emotional deprivation
  • Disinhibited attachment: children do not discriminate between people they choose as attachment figures so these children will treat near-strangers with inappropriate familiarity and may be attention seeking
  • Poor parenting: Quinton compared 50 women who had been reared in institutions compared the 50 women who were reared at home. When these women were in their 20s the institutionalised women were experiencing extreme difficulties acting as parents like some of the ex-institutionalised women had children who had also spent time in care
• Individual differences


  • Not all children who experience institutionalised attachment are unable to recover
  • In all of the studies some children are not strongly attached as others
  • Rutter- some of the children may have received special attention in the institution as they may have smiled more so this would mean that they had some earlier attachment experiences
  • Bowlby's study of children hospitalised with TB showed that there were individual differences in the way children cope
• Real World Application:

  In the past, mothers who were going to give a baby up for adoption were encouraged to nurse the baby for a significant period of time, by the time the baby was adopted the sensitive period for attachment formation may have passed making it difficult to form secure attachment. Today most babies are adopted within the first week of birth and research shows adoptive mothers and children are just as securely attached as non-adoptive families.
• Value of Longitudinal Studies:

  Followed the life of children over many years, without these studies incorrect conclusions that there are major effects due to early institutionalised care but some of these studies show that the effects may disappear after sufficient time and with suitable high-quality care
• Deprivation is only one factor:

  Romanian orphans were faced with much more than emotional deprivation, physical conditions were appalling which impacted their health and the lack of cognitive stimulation would have affected their development, more likely damage would happen only occurs when there are multiple risk factors, also poor care in infancy is followed by poor subsequent care like difficulty living in poverty experiencing parental disharmony
• One finding from the Romanian study was at the last assessment at age 11 a lower number of children had disinhibited attachment, effect of institutionalisation do disappear over time good-quality emotional care- ex-institutional children need more time than normal to mature sufficiently and learn how to cope with relationships, this is a criticism of the research as it implies that the effects may be irreversible but this may not be true, supported by Le Mare and Audet findings of physical underdevelopment had improved by age 11- development does continue in these children so simply may not have reached full potential in these studies so far