| Topic: |
Sociology > Education |
| User: |
"fx" |
| Date: |
22 Dec 2007 10:16:40 PM |
| Object: |
Study Quantifies Orphanage Link to I.Q. |
Study Quantifies Orphanage Link to I.Q.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/us/21foster.html?ref=us
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: December 21, 2007
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 by child. Both groups, however,
had significantly lower I.Q.’s than a comparison group of children
raised by their biological families.
Some developmental psychologists had sharply criticized the study and
its sponsor, the MacArthur Foundation, for researching a question whose
answer seemed obvious. But previous efforts to compare institutional
care and foster care suffered from serious flaws, mainly because no one
knew whether children who landed in orphanages were different in unknown
ways from those in foster care. Experts said the new study should put to
rest any doubts about the harmful effects of institutionalization — and
might help speed adoptions from countries that still allow them.
“Most of us take it as almost intuitive that being in a family is better
for humans than being in an orphanage,” said Seth Pollak, a psychologist
at the University of Wisconsin, who was not involved in the research.
“But other governments don’t like to be told how to handle policy issues
based on intuition.”
“What makes this study important,” Dr. Pollak went on, “is that it gives
objective data to say that if you’re going to allow international
adoptions, then it’s a good idea to speed things up and get kids into
families quickly.”
In recent years many countries, including Romania, have banned or
sharply restricted American families from adopting local children. In
other countries, adoption procedures can drag on for many months. In
2006, the latest year for which numbers are available, Americans adopted
20,679 children from abroad, more than half of them from China,
Guatemala and Russia.
The authors of the new study, led by Dr. Charles H. Zeanah Jr. of Tulane
and Charles A. Nelson III of Harvard and Children’s Hospital in Boston,
approached Romanian officials in the late 1990s about conducting the
study. The country had been working to improve conditions at its
orphanages, which became infamous in the early 1990s as Dickensian
warehouses for abandoned children.
After gaining clearance from the government, the researchers began to
track 136 children who had been abandoned at birth. They administered
developmental tests to the children, and then randomly assigned them to
continue at one of Bucharest’s six large orphanages or join an adoptive
family. The foster families were carefully screened and provided “very
high-quality care,” Dr. Nelson said.
On I.Q. tests taken at 54 months, the foster children scored an average
of 81, compared with 73 among the children who continued in an
institution. The children who moved into foster care at the youngest
ages tended to show the most improvement, the researchers found.
The comparison group of youngsters who grew up in their biological
families had an average I.Q. of 109 at the same age, said the
researchers, who announced their preliminary findings in Romania as soon
as they were known.
“Institutions and environments vary enormously across the world and
within countries,” Dr. Nelson said, “but I think these findings
generalize to many situations, from kids in institutions to those in
abusive households and even bad foster care arrangements.”
In setting up the study, the researchers directly addressed the ethical
issue of assigning children to institutional care, which was suspected
to be harmful.
“If a government is to consider alternatives to institutional care for
abandoned children, it must know how the alternative compares to the
standard care it provides,” they wrote. “In Romania, this meant
comparing the standard of care to a new and alternative form of care.”
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.
Dr. Pollak said, “The evidence seems to say 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.”
CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A
DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NATIONAL
SECURITY AGENCY/CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WIRETAPPING PROGRAMS....
CPS Does not protect children...
It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even
killed at the hands of Child Protective Services.
every parent should read this .pdf from
connecticut dcf watch...
http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf
http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com
Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US
These numbers come from The National Center on
Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN)
Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS
*Perpetrators of Maltreatment*
Physical Abuse CPS 160, Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13
Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12
Fatalities CPS 6.4, Parents 1.5
Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that
are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per
100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse
and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the
citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold
parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY
government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and
death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more
human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which
they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that
they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when
children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a
bunch of social workers.
CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES, HAPPILY DESTROYING THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT
FAMILIES YEARLY NATIONWIDE AND COMING TO YOU'RE HOME SOON...
BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...
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