Posted on 12/20/2007 2:10:31 PM PST by reaganaut1
Psychologists have long believed that growing up in an institution like an orphanage stunts children’s mental development but have never had direct evidence to back it up.
Now they do, from an extraordinary years-long experiment in Romania that compared the effects of foster care with those of institutional child-rearing.
The study, being published on Friday in the journal Science, found that toddlers placed in foster families developed significantly higher I.Q.’s by age 4, on average, than peers who spent those years in an orphanage.
The difference was large — eight points — and the study found that the earlier children joined a foster family, the better they did. Children who moved from institutional care to families after age 2 made few gains on average, though the experience varied from child to child. Both groups, however, had significantly lower I.Q.’s than a comparison group of children raised by their biological families.
...
Any number of factors common to institutions could work to delay or blunt intellectual development, experts say: the regimentation, the indifference to individual differences in children’s habits and needs; and most of all, the limited access to caregivers, who in some institutions can be responsible for more than 20 children at a time.
“The evidence seems to say,” said Dr. Pollak, of Wisconsin, “that for humans, we need a lot of responsive care giving, an adult who recognizes our distinct cry, knows when we’re hungry or in pain, and gives us the opportunity to crawl around and handle different things, safely, when we’re ready.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Agreed...
My wife is a certified pre-school teacher in Canada...
So my kids get a mom and a pre-school teacher all in one!
Psychologists have long believed that Public Schools stunt children’s mental development but have never had direct evidence to back it up.............
Do we really think this is sound methodology?
Hmmm, the problem is the orphanage right? B.S. How about the circumstances that put the kid in the orphanage in the first place? That didn’t have any impact?
Some of the folks that run these types of studies are horses asses.
Orphanages may not be perfect, but they sure as hell beat some of the terrible alternatives. And it strikes me as terribly irresponsible to trash orphanages.
But Democrats only support government day care for those that make it out alive. Their real solution to the problem is to never allow them to be born in the first place.
Ouch!
I think the study is likely invalid . . . Romanian orphanages are likely hell-holes where the kids are not properly cared for. The study probably, realistically, only shows that children that are ignored, not given good medical attention, and not given good nutrition have lower IQ’s.
So does working in Congress.
Romanian orphanages?
Do we really think this is sound methodology?
Great point. But perhaps the only game in town because we pretty much have stopped using orphanages. Foster care is an option in this country now but not so in the 1930’s era. I write with first-hand knowledge, orphanages were great.
We adopted our son who spent the first two and a half years of his life in a Russian orphanage, and although he was well cared-for and well-fed in a group of 12 children with typically three daytime caretakers, I know some other kids who at the age we took him home were speaking in full, grammatically-correct sentences, whereas he was still speaking maybe a few dozen generally mushy Russian words.
And he’s pretty darn smart to begin with, and it shows very well now that he’s nearing four years old and speaking English quite well. I suspect that his language development would have been much further along had he been fostered instead of in an orphanage for those 2 1/2 years.
One thing we noticed, as did other people we know, when you walk into an orphanage is how QUIET it is compared to a similar-sized group of family-raised kids.
There’s also no mention of how children were selected for foster care vs remaining in an orphanage, and how “returns” from foster care were handled. I’d suspect that the tots who seemed brighter to begin with were more likely to get into foster care and stay there.
That makes sense. I agree with your observation.
***Orphanages may not be perfect, but they sure as hell beat some of the terrible alternatives. And it strikes me as terribly irresponsible to trash orphanages.***
Kinda depends on the orphanage, doesn’t it My aunt’s husband, his two brothers and his sister were all raised in a church-funded orphanage. They were all intelligent, emotionally well-centered, and all became good citizens with good jobs.
Yes it does. I note that generally there isn’t much of a disclaimer on criticisms of orphanages though. In general I defend the premise and acknowledge there are almost always exceptions to every primise in life.
My thought exactly. Romainian orphanages are definitely skewed to the extreme side of the spectrum.
I wonder if these researchers ever heard of Boys Town.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.