The Orphans of Davenport

by Marilyn Brookwood

  7.Susan Christian, “The Waiting Game: Hundreds of Americans Anxious about Adopting Romanian Orphans,” Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1990.

  8.Sandra Blakeslee, “Timetable Key to Brain Growth,” New York Times, August 29, 1995.

  9.Battiata, “Inside Romanian Orphanages.”

  10.Battiata, “Inside Romanian Orphanages.”

  11.Melissa Fay Green, “30 Years Ago, Romania Deprived Thousands of Babies of Human Contact: Here’s What’s Become of Them,” The Atlantic, July-August, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/can-an-unloved-child-learn-to-love/612253/.

  12.“Statistics on Intercountry Adoptions,” Ours 25 (1992): 8–9.

  13.Dana E. Johnson, Laurie C. Miller, Sandra Iverson, William Thomas, Barbara Franchino, et al., “The Health of Children Adopted from Romania,” Journal of the American Medical Association 268, no. 24 (1992): 3450.

  14.Charles A. Nelson III, interview by Marilyn Brookwood, July 1, 2009.

  15.Charles A. Nelson III, Nathan A. Fox, and Charles H. Zeanah, Romania’s Abandoned Children: Deprivation, Brain Development, and the Struggle for Recovery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 75.

  16.Nelson, Fox, and Zeanah, Romania’s Abandoned Children, 15.

  17.Nelson, Fox, and Zeanah, Romania’s Abandoned Children, 16.

  18.Nelson, Fox, and Zeanah, Romania’s Abandoned Children, 62.

  19.Nelson, Fox, and Zeanah, Romania’s Abandoned Children, 102.

  20.Charles A. Nelson III, Charles H Zeanah, Nathan A. Fox, Peter J. Marshall, Anna T. Smyke, and Donald Guthrie, “Cognitive Recovery in Socially Deprived Young Children: The Bucharest Early Intervention Project,” Science 318 (2007): 1938.

  21.Nelson, Fox, and Zeanah, Romania’s Abandoned Children, 57.

  22.Charles H. Zeanah, Nathan A. Fox, and Charles A. Nelson III, “Case Study in Ethics of Research: The Bucharest Early Intervention Project,” Journal of Nervous Mental Disorders 200, no. 3 (2012): 7.

  23.Nelson et al., “Cognitive Recovery in Socially Deprived Young Children,” 1938.

  24.Nelson et al., “Cognitive Recovery in Socially Deprived Young Children,” 1938–39.

  25.Nelson et al., “Cognitive Recovery in Socially Deprived Young Children,” 1938–39.

  26.Nelson, Fox, and Zeanah, Romania’s Abandoned Children, 160.

  27.Anna Smyke, Sebastian F. Koga, Dana E. Johnson, Nathan A. Fox, Peter J. Marshall, et al., “The Caregiving Context in Institution-Reared and Family-Reared Infants and Toddlers in Romania,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 48, no.2 (2007): 215.

  28.Skeels and Fillmore, “Children From Underprivileged Homes,” 427–39.

  29.Skeels, “Adult Status of Children,” 36–37.

  30.Nelson, Fox, and Zeanah, Romania’s Abandoned Children, 191.

  31.Nelson, Fox, and Zeanah, Romania’s Abandoned Children, 190–192.

  32.Nelson, Fox, and Zeanah, Romania’s Abandoned Children, 208–209.

  33.Sally Provence and Rose Lipton, Infants in Institutions (New York: International Universities Press, 1962), 175.

  34.Kirsten Weir, “The Lasting Impact of Neglect: Psychologists Are Studying How Early Deprivation Harms Children—and How Best to Help Those Who Have Suffered from Neglect,” Monitor on Psychology 45 (June 2014): 36.

  35.“Serve & Return Interaction Shapes Brain Circuitry.”

  36.“Toxic Stress Derails Healthy Development,” National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVwFkcOZHJw.

  37.Bruce S. McEwen, “Effects of Stress on the Developing Brain,” Cerebrum (September-October 2011), accessed March 10, 2014, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3574783/.

  38.Robert E. Anda, Vincent J. Felitti, J. Douglas Bremner, John D. Walker, Charles Whitfield, et al., “The Enduring Effects of Abuse and Related Adverse Experiences in Childhood: A Convergence of Evidence from Neurobiology and Epidemiology,” European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience 256 (2006): 174–86.

  39.Andrea Danese and Bruce S. McEwen, “Adverse Childhood Experiences, Allostasis, Allostatic Load, and Age-Related Disease,” Physiology and Behavior 106 (2012): 35.

  40.Clancy Blair and Cybele Raver, “Poverty, Stress, and Brain Development: New Directions for Prevention and Intervention,” Academic Pediatrics 16, no. 35 (2016): S30.

  41.Nicole L. Hair, Jamie L. Hanson, Barbara L. Wolfe, and Seth D. Pollak, “Association of Child Poverty, Brain Development, and Academic Achievement,” Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics 169, no. 9 (2015): 852.

  42.Patrick Sharkey, “The Acute Effects of Local Homicides on Children’s Cognitive Performance,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 107, no. 26 (2010): 11733–34.

  43.Vincent J. Felitti, R. F. Anda, D. Nordenberg, D. F. Williamson, A. M. Spitz, et al., “Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study,” American Journal of Preventative Medicine 14, no. 4 (1998): 245.

  44.Anda et al., “Enduring Effects of Abuse,” 175.

  45.Paul Tough, Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), 21.

  46.Joan Luby, “Poverty’s Most Insidious Damage: The Developing Brain,” Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics 169, no. 9 (2015): 811.

  47.James J. Heckman, Giving Kids a Fair Chance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), 3.

  48.James J. Heckman, “Skill Formation and the Economics of Investing in Disadvantaged Children,” Science 312 (June 30, 2006): 1900.

  49.Heckman, “Skill Formation,” 1902.

  50.Jeanne Morris Hines, “An Overview of Head Start Program Studies,” Journal of Instructional Pedagogies 18 (2017): 5.

  51.Madeline Ostrander, “How Preschool Can Make You Smarter and Healthier,” NOVA, WGBH, April 9, 2015.

  52.Hines, “Overview of Head Start,” 5.

  53.“The Carolina Abecedarian Project,” Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, https://abc.fpg.unc.edu/.

  54.Frances Campbell, Gabriella Conti, James J. Heckman, Seong Hyeok Moon, Rodrigo Pinto, et al., “Early Childhood Investments Substantially Boost Adult Health,” Science 343 (2014): 1484.

  55.Arthur J. Reynolds, Ou Suh-Ruu, and Judy A. Temple, “A Multicomponent, Preschool to Third Grade Preventive Intervention and Educational Attainment at 35 Years of Age,” Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics 172, no. 3 (2018): 248.

  56.Reynolds et al., “Multicomponent,” 255.

  57.Hines, “Overview of Head Start,” 3.

  58.Head Start Impact Study, US Department of Health and Human Services, Final Report, 2010, xxvi.

  59.Diane W. Schanzenbach and Lauren Bauer, “The Long-Term Impact of the Head Start Program,” The Hamilton Project, Brookings Institution, August 2016, 3.

  60.Alexander M. Gelber and Adam Isen, “Children’s Schooling and Parents’ Investment in Children: Evidence from the Head Start Impact Study,” Journal of Public Economics 101 (2013): 26.

  61.Elyse Chor, “Multigenerational Head Start Participation: An Unexpected Marker of Progress,” Child Development 89, no. 1 (2018): 264.

  62.Lillian Mongeau, “Why Does America Invest So Little in Its Children?” The Atlantic (in Partnership with the Hechinger Report), July 12, 2016.

  63.Jack P. Shonkoff and Diane Phillips, From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Development (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2000), 6.

  64.Gass, Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home, 1–16.

  65.Gass, Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home, 1–16.

  66.Gass, Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home, 1–16.

  67.Nelson et al., Romania’s Abandoned Children, 1.

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