Prolonged Institutional Care Research Articles

Behavior problems in postinstitutionalized internationally adopted children

Using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), the rate and type of behavior problems associated with being reared in an institution prior to adoption were examined in 1,948, 4- through 18-year-old internationally adopted children, 899 of whom had experienced prolonged institutional care prior to adoption. The children's adoptions were decreed between 1990 and 1998 in Minnesota. Binomial logistic regression analyses revealed that early institutional rearing was associated with increased rates of attention and social problems, but not problems in either the internalizing or externalizing domains. Independent of institutional history, children who were adopted >or=24 months had higher rates of behavior problems across many CBCL scales, including internalizing and externalizing problems. In general, time in the adoptive home, which also reflected age at testing, was positively associated with rates of problem behavior. Thus, there was little evidence that the likelihood of behavior problems wane with time postadoption. Finally, children adopted from Russia/Eastern Europe appeared at greater risk of developing behavior problems in several domains compared to children adopted from other areas of the world.

Predisposition to petty criminality in Swedish adoptees. III. Sex differences and validation of the male typology.

Sex differences in the inheritance of criminality were studied in 913 women and 862 men from the Stockholm Adoption Study. Our multivariate classification of genetic heterogeneity was validated in the female sample by confirmation of predictions derived from the men. The congenital antecedents of criminality were the same regardless of sex, but the congenital predisposition to criminality had to be more severe for a woman to be affected. Furthermore, the postnatal antecedents of criminality that were studied were qualitatively different in the two sexes. Prolonged institutional care and urban rearing increased the risk of criminality in women but not in men. In contrast, multiple temporary placements and low social status of the adoptive home increased the risk ot criminality in men but not women. The antecedents of petty criminality and alcohol abuse were distinct in both sexes. Cross-fostering analysis indicated that postnatal factors were more important for criminality than for alcoholism in women. We discuss the overall significance of this series of reports and make suggestions for future research.

Infants in institutions; a comparison of their development with family-reared infants during the first year of life.

Infants in Institutions is a major contribution to our understanding of early childhood and is a moving documentation of the adverse influences of maternal deprivation, prolonged institutional care, and relative isolation upon early development. The study by Provence and Lipton reports in rich detail an institutional setting and, as measured by standardized baby tests and clinical evaluations, the development of the infants residing there. These observations are accompanied by the authors' stimulating impressions of the pathological influences these environmental conditions have had upon the infants' emotional and physical development, particularly their motor behavior and relationships to people and inanimate objects and themselves. This research deals with fundamental processes of ego development, autonomous ego functions, fixations, impairments in early object attachments and their later effects. This book is must reading for those who accept institutional-rearing with a complacent attitude insensitive to the deleterious effects upon psychological development. It also will be

Social and psychologic problems associated with prolonged institutional care for rheumatic children

Social and psychologic problems associated with prolonged institutional care for rheumatic children

Discussion of "Are Broken Homes a Causative Factor in Juvenile Delinquency?"

D R SHAW'S findinigs are not as irreconcilable with the opinions of social workers as they would have been ten years ago. The light that has been thrown in the meanwhile on family attitudes which contribute to child delinquency in the present-day world make us, I think, fairly ready to accept his concluding statement that we must look for these [destructive] influences in the more subtle aspects of family relationships rather than in the formal break in the family organization. A non-psychiatrically trained social worker, while perhaps not going all the way with her brethren and sisters in the psychiatric field, is now aware, it seems to me, that the greatest needs of a child are (i) security and confidence in the affectional relationship within his home, anid (X) an acceptance of his family standards based on participation and pride in them. If he feels insecure, or if he is ashamed of his family, he is likely to be motivated towards antisocial conduct. It is, therefore, obvious that not alone the gross phenomena of family breakage, but also the less open manifestations of family discord and instability have their place in the causation of behavior problems in the children. I wish that Dr. Shaw, and others who have written on this subject, had been less sweeping in their definition of the phrase homes. A home from which a wellloved parent has been removed by death is not the same thing at all as one violently disrupted by the enid results of parental disagreement. The teachings of the departed parent, tlhe ideals he or she previously inculcated, remain and gain added force in the segment of the family circle which survives. Equally is this true when sickness and prolonged institutional care remove one of the parents. There may be in such a case, no affectional insecurity at all, and certainly no sense of shame. The child's loyalties are re-enforced; the desire to please the absent parent, to win approbation on his return, becomes a powerful incentive. Protective feelings are evoked toward the other members of the family, mother's little man is eager-sometimes too eager-to enact his new role as male head of the family; daughters rally to keep the home as the absent mother would like to see it, and to 'cheer poor Daddy up. Instances are by no means lacking where imprisonment of the breadwinner has been attended with these same results, belief in the parent's innocence, or even in his affection alone, stimulating a loyalty which is proof against shame. I wish, therefore, that Dr. Shaw and his associates had been able to determine, and to tell us the proportion, both in his schoolboy population and in his delinquent group, of homes which had been broken voluntarily, as against those which had been broken involuntarily. This would not, of course, have told the whole story, and his conclusion points to the need for further study, felt