If you were around in 1990, you probably remember the worldwide shock at the revelation that thousands of small children in Romania were housed in abominable conditions by the former Communist regime under Nicolae Ceausescu, who was overthrown and executed on Christmas day1989.
With the end of Ceausescu‘s 24-year dictatorship, the world discovered the horrible conditions in Romania, one of the last European Communist regimes to fall. Romanian children, orphaned by parental deaths, poverty, parents unwilling to raise the children they had made, were warehoused in large rooms filled with children, who were imprisoned from birth in what were essentially crates. They were fed inadequate diets that left them malnourished and prone to various nutritional diseases and deformities.
Worldwide media, including ABC’s 20/20 program showed the world what had happened in Romania under Ceausescu, who thought increasing Romania’s population would be economically beneficial. He outlawed contraception and abortion, thereby ensuring that many babies would be unloved.
The Atlantic magazine’s July-August issue contains a follow-up on the discovery of these warehouses euphemistically called orphanages and the children who survived their early life in little prison cells. The discovery of these warehouses has been compared to the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945, as sickeningly disgusting as the Nazi horror.
The Atlantic reports that these Romanian orphans provided an opportunity to study the impact on children of withholding parental love, care and contact. Some of the children were adopted by American families, who bravely lavished love and comfort on children who had never felt loved. Sadly, many orphans had difficulty responding to parental love, nutritious meals, possessions, safety and care after the deprivations they had experienced in Romania.
Some children rebelled. The Atlantic article told of one child who soon wanted to return to Romania until he realized that his birth parents were living in abject poverty — a hut with no privacy, a dirt floor, no running water, etc. Despite being lavished with love and attention, many of the Romanian orphans grew troubled, disobedient, dishonest, destructive and violent, a terror to their adoptive parents.
Some might take the Atlantic article as a warning to naïve couples contemplating international adoption, but I had a different thought: These displaced orphans were “acting out” in much the same way troubled American children do — children who had not experienced the horrors of living in cages inside a warehouse with a handful of employees to attend to scores of children in one big room.
Both the Romanian orphans and American children might be suffering from one need that affluence and institutions, including child psychology, can’t provide: sufficient doses of unconditional love. American children aren’t living in squalid conditions as in Romania, but they sometimes miss out on loving attention as parents rush to work or other commitments. Over-scheduled children are busy and seemingly happy spending more time with teachers and care providers than with parents, but many say they wish they had more one-on-one time with mom and dad.
The Romanian children and this pandemic lockdown have shown again that children (and adults, too) need physical expressions of love. The lockdown’s effect on mental health has been documented. Will our children be affected by today’s loss of hugs, slaps on the back and handshakes? Humans are touch-oriented, whether it’s holding hands or hugging.
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