Social and family relationships of ex-institutional adolescents.

The adolescents described in the preceding companion article (J. Child Psychol. Psychiat. 30, 53-75, 1989) had experienced multiple changing caregivers until at least 2 years old. Such maternal deprivation did not necessarily prevent them forming strong and lasting attachments to parents once placed in families, but whether such attachments developed depended on the family environment, being much more common in adopted children than in those restored to a biological parent. Both these groups alike, however, were more oriented towards adult attention, and had more difficulties with peers and fewer close relationships than matched comparison adolescents, indicating some long term effects of their early institutional experience.