Romanian orphans - institutionalision Flashcards
Orphan studies
These concern children placed in care because their parents cannot look after the. An orphan is a child whose parents have either died or have abandoned them permanently
Institutionalisation
A term for the effects of living in an institutional setting. The term ‘institution’ refers to a place like a hospital or an orphanage where people live for long, continuous periods of time. In such places there is often very little emotional care provided. In attachment research we are interested in the effects of institutional care on children’s attachment and subsequent development
Romanian orphan studies background
- Opportunity to look into the effects of institutional care and institutionalisation arose in Romania in the 1990s
- Former president Nicolai Ceaucescu required women to have 5 children - so many parents could not afford to keep their children and the children ended up in huge orphanages in poor conditions
-After the 1989 Romanian revolution - many of the children were adopted, and some by British parents
Rutter et al’.s research (2011)
- Rutter et al followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans for many years as part of the English and Romanian adoptee (ERA) study - Orphans had been adopted by families in the UK
- ERA - tried to investigate the extent to which good care could make up for poor early experiences in institutions
- Physical, cognitive and emotional development was assessed at the ages of 4.6, 11, 15 and 22-25 years
- A group of 52 children from the UK at the same time were used a control group
Rutter’s findings
When they first arrived in the UK, half the adoptees showed signs of delayed intellectual development and the majority were severely undernourished.
Age of 11 - adopted children showed differential rates of recovery that were related to their age of adoption:
- Mean IQ of those children adopted before six months was 102, between six months and two years was 86, and those after two years was 77
Differences remained at 16 (Beckett et al 2010)
ADHD was more common in 15 and 22-25 year old samples (Kennedy et al 2016)
Children adopted after six months showed signs of a particular attachment styles called disinhibited attachment - symptoms of attention-seeking, clinginess, social behaviour that was indiscriminate of adults, both familiar and unfamiliar
Those adopted before the age of six months, rarely displayed disinhibited attachment
Effects of institutionalisation
Disinhibited attachment - Children who have spent time in their early lives in an institution show signs of disinhibited attachment, being equally friendly towards familiar people and strangers. High unusual behaviour - children often show stranger anxiety
Rutter (2006) - explained disinhibited attachment as an adaption to living with multiple caregivers during the sensitive period for attachment formation. In poor quality institutions, children may have multiple carers but doesn’t spend long enough with any of them to form an attachment
Intellectual disability - Rutter’s study showed most children showed signs of intellectual disability when they arrived in Britain. Most adopted before they were six months caught up with the control before they were four
Like emotional development, intellectual development can be recovered provided adoption takes placed before the age of six months - the age at which attachments form
Strength of orphan studies - real-world application
- Romanian orphanages study can be applied in order to improve conditions for children growing up outside of the family home
- Improved psychologists understanding of the effects of institutional are and how to prevent the worst of these effects
- Led to improvements in the conditions experienced by looked-after children (e.g. the care system) - e.g. the care system now avoid large amounts of caregivers for each child, but each child has one or two ‘key workers’ who play a central role in their emotional care
- Institutional care is now seen as an undesirable option for raising children, and there is not effort to put children into foster-care or to have them adopted
Means that children in institutional care have a chance to develop normal attachments, and avoid disinhibited attachment
Strength - fewer confounding variables
- Lack of confounding variables
- Many orphan studies before the Romanian orphans became available
- Many of the children had experienced varying degrees of trauma, so was difficult to differentiate the effects of neglect, physical abuse from those of institutional care
- However, Romanian orphans had all been handed over by loving parents who couldn’t afford to keep them - means the results are less likely to be confounded by other negative experiences - high internal validity
Counterpoint to fewer confounding variables
- COUNTERPOINT - studying children from Romanian orphanages might have introduced different confounding variables - quality of care in these institutions was poor, with children receiving little comfort - meaning that the effects studying may the result of poor institutional care, rather than institutional care
Limitation to lack of adult data
- Lack of current data on adult development
- Latest data from the ERA study looked at the children in their early - to mid 20s - do not have data to look into long-term effects of early institutional care, e.g. mental health problems, success in maintaining adult romantic and parental relationships
Long time to gather data - as longitudinal study - some time before questions are answered
Limitation - generalisability
- Treatment of Romanian orphanages was so extreme, that the results may not be generalised to all orphanages/institutions
Social sensitivity
- Socially sensitive study as shows that late-adopted children have poor development outcomes - results have been published while the children have been growing up, meaning that parents and teachers have lowered their expectations and treated the children differently
However, much has been learned that might benefit future institutionalised children
