PERCEIVED RELATIONSHIP QUALITY IN ADOLESCENTS FOLLOWING EARLY SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL DEPRIVATION

Orphanages in the Russian Federation are deficient primarily in social-emotional relationships (St. Petersburg-USA Orphanage Research Team, 2005). Children who spend their first months or years of life in orphanages have limited opportunities to form relationships and to develop proper social skills. This early experience has been associated with many problematic behavioral outcomes (Gunnar et al., 2007; Rutter et al., 2010). However, researchers have not frequently examined relationship quality of post-institutional (PI) adoptees, nor have they examined aspects of the adoptive family that might moderate institutionalization effects. The purpose of this study was to examine the self-reported relationship quality (using the Network of Relationships Inventory: Social Provisions Version; Furman & Buhrmester, 1985) of 10-17-year-old children adopted into the USA from Russian orphanages and to determine whether sibling characteristics (relative age, gender composition, sibling adoption status) moderate institutionalization effects. Older age at adoption was related to poorer friendship and sibling, but not mother, relationship quality. Older siblings and same-sex siblings buffered children from this negative age-at-adoption association