HISTORY

In 1966 Nicolae Ceauşescu, Secretary General of Romania’s Communist Party, passed a decree to ban abortion and birth control in order to increase the very low birth and fertility rates and increase the population in Romania.  The decree stated that abortion was only allowed to women over 45, women who already had 4 children, the pregnancy endangered the life of the woman or was a result of rape or incest.  Due to this drastic decrease in abortions the number of live births rose 92.8% from 273,687 to 527,764 in 1967 ("Demographic Policy").  Without birth control or abortion to keep them from having children, the amount of children abandoned to the government rose dramatically, landing hundreds of thousands of children in ill-equipped orphanages (Romanian Orphans).

            When Ceausescu’s government fell in 1989 there were more than 100,000 children living in Romanian orphanages (Beckelmen).  This problem only came to light for the rest of the world in the early 90’s but “poverty, illiteracy, homelessness and the habits of the past have left the rate of child abandonment unchanged” (Beckelmen).  Some progress has been made to the orphanages but they are still over crowded, understaffed and the children get little or no attention. “According to a 2005 United Nations report, 9,000 Romanian children are left in hospitals and maternity wards each year," (Beckelmen)  The appalling numbers of abandoned children in orphanages leave them with few caregivers with little time for each child.  The consequences of this neglect are terrible.   

CONDITIONS

The conditions in these state-run orphanages are atrocious.  The children are left alone for most of the day, receiving five or six minutes of attention a day (Perlez).  The children, consequently, have little stimulation or physical activity. “Babies weren’t held when they were crying, fed when hungry or changed when wet… they were left lying on their backs in cribs for hours staring up that the bare white ceilings” (Beckelmen).

When Bucharest Early Intervention Project researchers first visited Romania in the late 1990s, they saw teenagers the size of 8-year-olds, not because of poor nutrition, but because emotional and social deprivation inhibit growth. “They witnessed rows of toddlers who, lying alone for hours, waved hands repetitively in front of their faces in an effort at self-stimulation. Language and attachment, learning and attention, emotion, behavior, IQ—all can be damaged when infants are denied the coos, smiles, and consistent, one-on-one care of a normal childhood” (Beckelmen).  More and more evidence is found showing neglect directly leads to developmental delays.  The children are in desperate need of more individual care.

CONSEQUENCES

These abandoned children face many problems as they grow up in these conditions.  Many children are faced with deformities and mangled limbs due to lack of exercise and proper room to grow.  Also, because of reused needles and contaminated blood supplies used in Romanian Hospitals many children contract HIV (Romanian Budget). Many face dealing with HIV and AIDS in a place where the resources are limited.  These orphanages “held, among thousands of children, an estimated 3,000 infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS” (Smith).  Currently there are an estimated 9,000 children infected with HIV in Romania (Romanian Budget).  Funds and medical supplies are scarce so many children with HIV or AIDS are living without their vital medicines.  The impoverished nation doesn’t have the capability to help all these dying children with such expensive needs.

            Physical ailments aren’t the only thing these children face.  There are many reports that the psychological damage is equally as crippling.  With such little attention and social interaction the children face life-long developmental delays which, according to the Relief Fund for Romania, are much more difficult to address.  Evidence of the delays are shown in their lower IQ scores (an average of 65 compared to 103), high percentages of mental illness (43 percent versus 14 percent) and frighteningly low heights and weights (Beckelmen).  Their speech and language are delayed, and they lack the ability to form healthy relationships.  Their demeanor shows their sorrow, “they smiled less, laughed less and were less likely to initiate or respond to social interaction” (Beckelmen).  Medically there were signs also; Children’s Hospital Boston states “their brains reflected this paucity of development, showing significant reductions in electrical activity,: showing clinical proof that these conditions are not acceptable."

The attachment theory was begun by John Bowlby stating that a child needed its mother from birth to be there for a consistent, loving, attention giver in order for the child to fully grow into an emotionally, socially functioning adult.  But Michael Rutter, a now famous psychologist, challenged that idea by saying the child needed many personal relationships and if the mother were not present as long as there was another close caregiver that was consistent, the child wouldn’t have the detrimental delays Bowlby spoke of.  Rutter didn’t disagree with Bowlby entirely, though.  He agreed that the child needed some sort of secure attachment, whether that be mother, father or foster parent. 

Michael Rutter published Maternal Deprivation Reassessed in 1976 which holds evidence that children needed someone, not necessarily a mother, from a very early age to consistently care for them and support them emotionally and physically or they could be developmentally damaged.  This theory is wholly supported by the lagging development of these Romanian orphans.  Rutter said there are six characteristics needed for adequate “mothering” some of which are a loving relationship, attachment, and stimulation (Rutter).  Meaning there is an intricate need for secure attachment, as the attachment theory also states, for the child to have normal social and emotional development.

These theories support the idea that these children need more than a few mintues of attention a day.  The unfortunate circumstances which lead to mothers thinking that leaving their children to the state would be better than not being able to feed them due to lack of income or having no place to keep them because of the cramped quarters many women live in has resulted in a terrible situation for the children.  As reported in the NY Times article “Romanian ‘Orphans’: Prisoners in Their Cribs”, many mother just don’t know what to do with the child and have no other options.  Many hope to later bring their children home once they are easier to take care of and the family is less poor, but that is rarely the outcome.

           

 

            The graph below is from a website that shows information from Dr. Dana Johnson’s research on post international adoption.  It states the percentage of children out of 293 children who have some sort of emotional disorder.   The numbers are appallingly high. (Post Adoption)

 

Table 11: Number and percentage distribution of survey participants with emotional disorders, by type of disorder
Disorder	Number	Percentage of all participants
All participants	293	100.0
Emotional disorders	143	48.8
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder	69	23.5
Reactive Attachment Disorder	54	18.4
Oppositional Defiant Disorder	40	13.7
Attachment difficulties	24	8.2
Bipolar Disorder	20	6.8
Anxiety Disorder	16	5.5
Depression	15	5.1
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder	9	3.1
Adjustment Disorder	3	1.0
Emotionally delayed	3	1.0
Anger management problems	2	0.7
Mood Disorder	1	0.3
Schizophrenia	1	0.3

 

Graph courtesy of postadoptinfo.com

           

 

            This graph shows the percentage of children from the same study that had developmental or neurological impairments. 

           

Table 6: Number and percentage distribution of survey participants with developmental delays, and those who also have neurological impairments
Condition	Number	Percentage of all participants
All participants	293	100.0
Developmental delays	170	58.0
Neurological impairments	140	47.8

 

Graph courtesy of postadoptinfo.org

FOREIGN ADOPTION

Many international people who have sought adoption have faced innumerable problems.  With the countless hours of paperwork and absurd government regulations it can take years to adopt a child from Romania.  According to the NY Times, “Last year 269 Romanian children were adopted by American families, 20 more than in 1994, the United States consul here says,” (Perlez) blaming the low numbers on paperwork and governmental issues.

            The graphs above are from an adoption website explaining the risks of international adoption.  Dr. Dana Johnson is currently doing the largest longitudinal study of post-institutional children in the US and she has found that most adopted children should be considered “special needs” because of their developmental delays.   Dr. Johnson also reports, "adopting parents should expect developmental delays." Tragically, there is an almost universal lack of understanding among adopting parents about what developmental delays really are, how profound they can be for the entire family, and how often they occur with other neurological impairments (Post Adoption).

            Though there are many struggles, adoption or foster care is the best option for the currently institutionalized children.  But, as the NY Times says, it is certainly not an answer for the continued high number of children in institutions. 

HELP

Nathan Fox, Charles Nelson, and Charles Zeanah are the American researches that went to Bucharest and started the Bucharest Early Intervention Project or BEIP, which is one of the first successful interventions to help the Romanian orphans.  Fox and Nelson brought expertise on how early development molds the developing brain and Zeanah on emotional attachment. This program showed that early intervention with foster families could considerably decrease the children’s developmental delays.  They used a control, children raised in a home with their birth parents, children placed in foster care and the children in the orphanages.  Their finding was that, as Nelson said, the children in the orphanages severely lacked stimulation so their brains cannot fully develop.  The foster children showed immense improvement if they were taken before the age of 2 and are functioning at an average level for children their age, “BEIP's initial findings suggest that consistent, high-quality foster care, begun early enough, may reverse many of these losses and salvage young lives” (Beckelmen).  Their progress was shown by the many trips back to Bucharest that these researchers took to reevaluate the children in the experiment.

            There are also many organizations such as the Relief Fund for Romania, where people can donate their time and money to these helpless children.  The Relief Fund raises money and spends it in Romania to help the orphans, whose objective is “The relief of poverty, sickness and distress through projects helping the children, sick and elderly of Romania's institutions and most disadvantaged communities,” (Romanian Orphans).  It is programs like BEIP and RFR that are making the most headway in the problems Romanian orphans face. 

REFERENCES

"BBC NEWS | World | Europe | What happened to Romania's orphans?" BBC NEWS | News Front Page. 03 May 2009 .

Beckelmen, Laurie. "The long road home." Children's Hospital Boston. 25 Apr. 2009 .

"Demographic Policy." Country Studies. 2003. Library of Congress. 20 Apr. 2009 .

Perlez, Jane. "Romanian 'Orphans': Prisoners of Their Cribs." New York Times (1996).

"Post Adoption Information: Research - Post Adoption Survey Results." Post Adoption Information: Home Page. 19 Apr. 2009 .

"Romanian Budget Insufficient To Care For AIDS Orphans." UN Wire: Email News Covering the United Nations and the World. 20 Apr. 2009 .

"Romanian Orphans." Relief Fund for Romania. 21 Apr. 2009 .

Rutter, Michael. Maternal Deprivation Reassessed. Harmondsworth Penguin, 1972.

Smith, Craig S. "Romania's Orphans Face Widespread Abuse, Group Says." New York Times 10 May 2006.