The first days, months and years in a child’s life are crucial for his development. At first, the sensory processes are being developed, and the infant learns to examine his hands, to look at people who are moving in front of him and to squeeze another hand. This process is accompanied by the development of the thought processes and the emotions. Children who are abandoned after birth spend a period of time being hospitalized, until Child Protection Services finds the best solution to protect the babies, which in most of the cases is the placement at a foster parent. This period of time has a major impact on the infant because of the absence of the mother and the child is not being properly stimulated. These children suffer an abandonment trauma, which causes negative psychological effects that influence the development: difficulty in forming a secure attachment, delay in cognitive development and in other areas of functioning, increased possibility of developing cognitive distortions. The role of a foster parent in the infant stage is of a high importance because he or she is the person to whom the child forms attachment, gives the child the opportunity of being raised in a family, to have models and become more resilient. Nevertheless, in the upbringing of children the effects of the abandonment trauma are still being seen in most of them: the child has low self-esteem, he forms an insecure attachment, develops signs of mental illness and difficulties in autonomy. This paper is an immersion in the literature on the development of children who were abandoned after birth. The novelty of the theme is represented by the observations made on the upbringing of these children at foster parents in Romania since the implementation of foster care in this country until the present day. There is a need to improve the training of the foster parents and the methods used by specialists in working with the children, so that they can become more resilient and have adequate coping mechanisms in the adult stage.