Romanian Orphan Studies: Effects of Institutionalisation Flashcards
What is institutionalism
When babies and children are placed in an institution – (which is living arrangements outside the family/family home) in a building such as a hospital, mental home or orphanage) where due to unfortunate circumstances, are unable to be looked after by parents or caregivers in their normal home/family. These children could be awaiting adoption or fostering
Therefore, An institution is a place dedicated to a particular task, such as looking after children awaiting adoption, or caring for the mentally ill, or looking after patients in hospital.
An institution is a place where people live for as period of time as opposed to day care or outpatient care where people go home every day.
What are the 2 negative consequences of institutionalisation
- The child adopting rules and norms of the institution that can impair functioning
- Leading to loss of personal identity, deindividuation etc.
In the past, such institutions had fairly strict regimes and offered little emotional care. Many institutions today strive to avoid this, especially where children are involved. This means that psychologists are no longer able to study this.
Events in Romania offered psychologists a chance to study deprivation. In 1966, the Romanian government, under the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu tried to boost the population of Romania by encouraging parents to have large families and also banning abortion.
The consequences of Ceausescu’s policy meant that many babies could not be cared for by their families . When the regime collapsed in 1989, the Western world became aware of the plight of the orphans in institutional care in Romania. There were more than 100000 orphans in 600 state-run orphanages. The children spent their days alone in cribs with very little stimulation – cognitive or emotional – in other words, they were malnourished and uncared for.
Rutter and Songua-Barke study
Procedure:
Michael Rutter and Edmund Songua-Barke have led the study of a group of Romanian orphans since the early 1990s – the study is called, ‘ERA’ (English and Romanian Orphans). The study includes 165 Romanian children who spend their early lives in Romanian institutions and thus suffered the effects of institutionalisation. The Romanian children who entered the UK fell into three age groups. All these children were then adopted by British families.
The Romanian children adopted fell into three age categories:
1) 54 adopted before the age of 6 months
2) 57 adopted between the ages of 6 months and 2 years
3) 54 adopted between the ages of 2-4 years.
The adoptees were tested at regular intervals (ages 4, 6, 11 and 15 years) to assess their physical, cognitive and social development. Information was also gathered in interviews with parents and teachers .Their progress compared has been compared to a control group of 52 British children adopted in the UK before the age of 6 months.
Findings:
At the time of adoption, the Romanian orphans lagged behind their British counterparts on all measures of physical, social, emotional and cognitive development. For example, most of the Romanian children were severely malnourished and half showed signs of mental retardation when they entered the UK. However, by the age of 4, some of the Romanian children had caught up with their British counterparts – especially those children adopted before the age of 6 months.
Subsequent follow ups have shown that those Romanian children adopted after the age of 6 months and thus experienced a longer period of institutional care, were more likely to suffer social, emotional and cognitive deficits. For example, at age 11, the mean IQ for the children was:
1) Adopted before 6 months – 102
2) Adopted between 6 months and 2 years – 86
3) Adopted between 2-4 years – 77
Interestingly, these IQ differences also remained when the children were 16 years of age.
In fact those children adopted between the ages of 2-4 years were more likely to suffer mental health issues. Many of the Romanian children adopted after the age of six months also showed signs of ‘disinhibited attachment’. Symptoms included attention seeking, clingy, and social behaviour directed indiscriminately towards all adults, both familiar and unfamiliar.
Disinhibited attachment is a typical effect of spending time in an institution. They are equally friendly and affectionate towards people they know well or who are strangers that they have just met. This is highly unusual behaviour as most children at about 2 years still show stranger anxiety.
Rutter (2006) has explained disinhibited attachment as an adaptation to living with multiple carers during the critical period for attachment formation. In poor quality institutions like those in Romania, a child might have 50 carers – none of who they see enough to form secure attachments
Conclusion:
Institutional care does not always mean that children will not recover as was shown in Rutters’ study especially with the British and Romanian children adopted before the age of 6 months! However, Rutters study does show that if conditions in an institution are appalling (as they would have been in Romania) then this can lead to long term consequences for these children. This study also supports the idea that the effects of institutionalisation can be minimised if the children are adopted as young as possible (e.g. before the age of 6 months).
Evaluation of Ritter and songua barke study
Evaluation:
There are obvious issues with this study such as not knowing the conditions of the orphanages in Romania before the children entered the UK.
Also ethical issues such as consent of the children would have been an issue – for example, these children did not give their permission to take part as they were too young.
Similarly only some of the children received detailed clinical investigations so it is difficult to fully generalise the findings
As this was a natural experiment, there may have been many extraneous variables which could have affected the findings of this study such as quality of care received from the parents of the adopted children.
Other studies of Romanian Orphans
Other studies of Romanian Orphans
Romanian orphans were also adopted in other parts of the world. Le Mare and Audet (2006) have reported the findings of a longitudinal study of 36 Romanian orphans adopted to families in Canada. The researchers studies the orphans physical growth and health. The adopted orphans were physically smaller than a matched control group at age four and a half years but the difference had disappeared by age 11 – this was also the case for physical health. This study suggests that recovery is possible from the effects of institutionalisation on physical development.
In a Romanian-based study, (known as the Bucharest Early Intervention Project) Zeanah et al. (2005) compared 95 Romanian children who had spent about 90% of their lives in an orphanage compared to a control group of 50 children who had never been in an institution. The children were aged between 12 and 31 months and assessed using the Strange Situation. The results showed that 74% of the control group were securely attached compared to 19% of the institutional group. In fact 65% of this group were classified as Type D – disorganised attachments. Furthermore the description of disinhibited attachment applied to 44% of this group compared to less than 20% of the controls.
Effects of institutionalisation
There are a number of well documented effects of institutionalisation including:
• Physical underdevelopment – children in institutional care are usually physically small, research has shown (e.g. Gardner, 1972) that lack of emotional care rather than poor nourishment is the cause of what has been called deprivation dwarfism.
• Intellectual underfunctioning (mental retardation) – cognitive development is also affected by emotional deprivation as shown in Skodak and Skeels (1949) study. They found that these children scored poorly on intelligence tests. However, when some of these children were transferred to a different institution where some inmates gave the children emotional care, the IQ scores improved by up to 30 points.
• Disinhibited attachment – a form of insecure attachment where children do not discriminate between people they choose as attachment figures. Such children will treat unfamiliar people with inappropriate familiarity and show over-friendliness and can even be attention seeking.
• Poor parenting – Harlow showed that monkeys raised in isolation or with a surrogate mother went on to become poor parents. Similarly, Quinton et al. (1984) who compared a group of 50 women who had been raised in institutions with a control group of women reared at their normal homes. When the women were in their 20s it was found that the ex-institutional women were really struggling to be good parents, as many of their children also spent time in care.
Strengths of institutionalisation studied
There are a number of well documented effects of institutionalisation including:
• Physical underdevelopment – children in institutional care are usually physically small, research has shown (e.g. Gardner, 1972) that lack of emotional care rather than poor nourishment is the cause of what has been called deprivation dwarfism.
• Intellectual underfunctioning (mental retardation) – cognitive development is also affected by emotional deprivation as shown in Skodak and Skeels (1949) study. They found that these children scored poorly on intelligence tests. However, when some of these children were transferred to a different institution where some inmates gave the children emotional care, the IQ scores improved by up to 30 points.
• Disinhibited attachment – a form of insecure attachment where children do not discriminate between people they choose as attachment figures. Such children will treat unfamiliar people with inappropriate familiarity and show over-friendliness and can even be attention seeking.
• Poor parenting – Harlow showed that monkeys raised in isolation or with a surrogate mother went on to become poor parents. Similarly, Quinton et al. (1984) who compared a group of 50 women who had been raised in institutions with a control group of women reared at their normal homes. When the women were in their 20s it was found that the ex-institutional women were really struggling to be good parents, as many of their children also spent time in care.
Weaknesses of institutionalisation studied
Ethical issues - an ethical issue associated with many of the Romanian Orphan studies is consent of the adoptees and their parents. For example, there was no consent taken from the actual orphans. Another ethical issue which is important to take into consideration is the psychological harm that may have been caused to the parents and children in this study – for example, being ‘participants’ in a piece of research carried out over a long period of time would have created worry and pressure (especially for the children who went back to their parents) and may have impacted on the findings of this study. More importantly – there is also an issue of social sensitivity – for example, studying children who are in an orphanage being adopted can have unforeseen consequences for the children and their parents especially if the research is used to make generalisations about adoption and then published.
Individual differences - some research suggests that individuals who do not form a primary attachment within that early critical period are unable to recover. Although this is not true of all children who experience institutionalisation. In all of the studies, some children are not as affected as others – there are individual differences. Rutter has suggested that it might be that some of the children did receive special care in the institution because they smiled more or were just ‘cute’ – this means that they did have some attachment experiences. This means that we need to be cautious in drawing conclusions about the effects of institutionalisation being permanent and irreversible
