The stories shocked and horrified the world: babies left malnourished in their cribs, sickly children starved to the bone, toddlers beaten and humiliated.
At the violent conclusion of the Romanian Revolution in 1989, an estimated 170,000 children were living in state-run institutions across the country. By 2001 — the year the country placed a moratorium on international adoptions — the number had dropped to 60,000.
It was in Romania that the Bucharest Early Intervention Project was born — an extensive, involved study comparing the outcomes of institutionalized children who were placed in foster homes by researchers early on in their lives to children who remained in institutional care.
For almost two decades, a University of Maryland professor and his two colleagues have followed the participating children. And, thanks to a recently awarded $3.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, the team is preparing to check in with the kids for the seventh time, now that they’re 21.
“We want to know where these kids are now and how are they dealing with becoming adults,” said Nathan Fox, a professor in this university’s human development and quantitative methodology department. “Do they have jobs, have they gone to school, are they using drugs, are they married? No one knows the effects of institutionalization on all those different domains of development.”