The tyrannical government of Nicolae Ceausescu sought to make the State of Romania stronger and more populous.
Among other initiatives, it imposed a ban on contraception and abortion; a side-effect of this policy was that many babies were born to mothers who could not afford to feed them. When a blood-thirsty revolution brutally ended that totalitarian regime in 1989, hideous things were uncovered in Romania. After the sordid execution of Ceausescu in a side-street in Bucharest, Western journalists flocked into the country. Among the most disturbing items on the television news were photographs of emaciated children abandoned by their parents, lying in squalor in various orphanages.
Professor Michael Rutter of King's College London followed many of these children since then and measured some of the effects of their early life experience. It is not surprising that the emotional deprivation they endured had a lasting impact. And those who survived an inadequate diet for long periods in their early years (as many had) often had restricted growth. This affected not only the body, but the head.
The plight of the Romanian orphans was striking. But there is growing evidence that far less severe adverse environments in very early childhood may cause problems in adulthood.
Sometimes our most important organ, the brain, is at risk. Scientists have studied development in many animal models to try to understand what happens. So, for example, if a kitten is blindfolded for a period immediately after its birth, its sight will be permanently impaired when the blindfold is removed.
At the very early stages of development, the brain matures fast and is at its most plastic. If we damage it by depriving it of normal experience, those nerve cells or the connections between them can never make up for lost time.
IMPORTANCE OF NURTURE
What happens before birth is as important. Recent research shows that stress, particularly in the middle months of pregnancy, can affect the human fetus. During the extreme winter of 1998, there was a massive ice storm in eastern Ontario in Canada. Pregnant women who were trapped in their houses during that winter for several weeks often suffered severe anxiety. In many cases, their stress hormones were markedly raised. Michael Meaney from McGill University has shown that some of these women subsequently gave birth to children who showed a marked decrease in learning ability when tested at four years old.
Dr Frances Champagne of Columbia University studied rats and mice while they were nursing their young. A few rodents merely breastfed their offspring without the more usual maternal behaviour of constantly licking the fur of their pups. And it turns out that pups who are not warmly mothered tend to be cognitively impaired as adults. When fully grown, they are less able to find their way out of a maze and show poorer memory when presented with simple tasks. They also may show other changes, such as aggressive behaviour.
A chilling finding is that these psychologically impaired animals pass on these traits when they themselves have children. It seems that adverse nurture affects the function of the DNA in the brain and some traits can be inherited.
Of course, rodents or kittens are not remotely like humans.
But the growing information about human babies is compelling. As the physiology and genetic function of small mammals is very similar to our own, it is probable that what we observe in experiments with small mammals is highly relevant to human children too.
SUPPORT FOR FAMILIES
We often used to assert that nature is more important than nurture. Yet we can do all kinds of things to improve how we rear our children but virtually nothing at all to change their genetic inheritance. Warm loving relationships, regular facial and verbal communication, a good balanced diet, and a secure and stable environment are really important, particularly in the earliest years of development.
This is why it is good that the nation is now investing in early years programmes initiated by the previous Government. The evidence suggests that families who are supported in this way raise children with fewer relationship problems, who are physically and psychologically healthier. We are lucky in Britain. Unlike the old regime in Romania, we have a political and social system that helps to give the next generation a better chance. But the state can't do this alone; good parenting is a vital issue in the future of all human society.