Goldfarb's study of children in institutions (1955)

Procedure - Goldfarb studied 15 children who had been in an institution up to around the age of 3 before being fostered. He compared these with a group of children who had been fostered at around 6 months of age. He wanted to see if fostering later was successful.

Results - He found that children who had been adopted later showed more problems in adolescence than those who were fostered early. The group who had been fostered later were also less emotionally secure, less mature and less intelligent than the other group.

Conclusion - Babies should not be put into institutions…