Coping is critical for adaptation across the lifespan. However, our knowledge of how it develops is limited by the fact that most coping theories concentrate on particular life stages. The purpose of this review is to examine similarities in theories across the lifespan to identify overlapping issues that could inform a lifespan theory of coping. Generally, individuals develop more positive and efficacious ways of coping as they age, with noted individual differences. Individuals may revert back to earlier strategies when facing new traumas or transitions. Coping is embedded within social contexts. In childhood, coping is scaffolded by parents, caregivers, and teachers, transitioning to peer influence in adolescence. In adulthood, dyadic coping within couples becomes central, although its influences on coping trajectories is largely unknown. A lifespan theory of coping should address plasticity, individual differences, social contextual, and increases in situational specificity and coping efficacy for better energy and resource management.

This chapter explores the specific coping strategies that children employ following a variety of stressful situations. In our efforts to understand why children differ in their appraisals of stressors and the coping strategies they use, we will hone in on the social context, with a particular focus on the impact of parents and teachers. Our chapter is informed by self-determination theory, a motivational perspective that articulates the psychological resources that children need when confronted with stressful situations, and explains how interpersonal contexts that do or do not meet these needs subsequently affect children’s coping responses. In doing so, this perspective answers two important questions about children’s coping – what features of a person’s environment predict coping responses and why. We end by delineating limitations to the current body of research on coping and directions for future research.

In this chapter, we argue that autonomy-related developmental processes are key for a more complete and deep-level understanding of the development of coping. We first discuss the critical role of autonomy in psychosocial growth, not only during adolescence but also throughout the lifespan. Then, we consider how autonomy-relevant experiences, and autonomy frustration in particular, trigger specific coping responses, and we discuss the developmental patterns of these coping responses and their implications for individuals’ psychosocial development. We then review how situation-specific characteristics of individuals’ context (e.g., the social domain and the degree of autonomy support in the situation) have implications for the unfolding of a coping episode. The chapters ends by discussing how proximal figures in one’s social context (with a particular focus on parents) can foster more adaptive and flexible coping, and how self-determination and mindfulness also serve as critical coping resources.

Coping refers to the multitude of actions individuals use to manage stressful encounters. In this chapter, we first describe stressful peer events during childhood and adolescence (e.g., bullying, rejection, victimization), focusing on their impact on mental health but also how they can provide opportunities to apply coping skills. Second, we address how peer relationships, at the group and the dyadic level, are prime settings for the development of coping by considering 1) the soothing and distracting presence of peers, 2) the selection of peers, and 3) the socialization of emotion and coping that can occur within peer interactions and relationships via processes of support, communication, and disclosure. We end with brief notes on the important consideration of the quality of peer relationships and the usefulness of considering gender (and cultural) differences, especially focusing on moderation effects to uncover whether these processes differ across gender and cultural subgroups.

The current chapter sets out to create a holistic overview of the relationships between social media use, stress, and coping. It discusses the ways in which social media can be employed as an adaptive way of coping by supporting information seeking and by providing online social support. However, the nature and design of social media platforms can enable maladaptive ways of coping by facilitating cyberbullying and negative online social comparison. Furthermore, the chapter examines how social media can be a coping liability when the user is psychologically dependent or addicted to media, or when their use prevents them from learning other ways to cope. Additionally, social media use is introduced as a stressor for young users through fear of missing out. Lastly, social media can be a resource for coping by providing assistance in coping with social media-related stressors and by providing ways to establish social resources or social support.

Children practice coping every day in response to stressors big and small. Coping develops iteratively with repeated exposure to developmentally normative stressors. The everyday perspective on coping focuses on the immediate functions of coping. Children’s experiences with various coping strategies in daily life shape the development of coping over the long term. The interpersonal perspective on coping focuses on the involvement of close others, including peers and family members, in children’s coping. Interactions with others are intertwined with and shape children’s responses to stressful events. The participation of peers and family members in children’s coping is connected to the adaptiveness of their responses in the short term, and their psychological well-being over the long term. These perspectives inform the conceptualization and measurement of coping. Moreover, they provide suggestions for interventions and the direction of future research on coping development.

This chapter offers an overview of research on the socialization of coping and emotion-related regulation. We begin the review with our conceptualization of coping and regulation. We then provide an overview of research on the socialization of coping and regulation. Specifically, we cover the role of the quality of the parent–child relationship, parental disciplinary practices, and emotion-related socialization practices on children’s coping and emotion-related regulation. We next consider applications of this research to interventions. We conclude with a discussion of complexities in this research, with a particular focus on the cultural context, bidirectional/interactional relations, and methodological factors.

Smartphones and wearables have made in-vivo assessment of stress, coping, and emotion via intensive longitudinal designs (ILDs) especially appealing. In this chapter, we briefly address the usefulness of adding an ILD framework to the coping researcher’s toolbox in the quest to gain a comprehensive and developmentally informed understanding of adolescent coping. Their importance rests on the ability of ILDs to capture coping microprocesses. Next, we draw on data to answer a pertinent question related to popular approaches to assessing coping via ILD: whether delivering ILD surveys via phone calls or text messages to adolescents reveals differences in compliance and data quality. We follow this with a discussion of several challenges associated with implementing ILDs, including types of coping questions these methods are less well-suited to address. We highlight the need to match theory to methods, and the need for a priori consideration of analytic approaches. This section further points to useful published resources for making optimal use of ILDs in developmental coping research, as well as describes novel passive sensing methods and physiological measurement approaches available via smartphones and wearables. We conclude the chapter with a brief discussion of how ILDs complement traditional longitudinal examinations of coping development.

Developmental research in human cognition has provided compelling evidence about how neurocognitive systems underlying the voluntary control of attention and self-regulation greatly contribute to the individual’s success in a wide range of aspects of life, such as academic and professional performance, social adjustment, and well-being (Moffit et al., 2011). In relation to this, much evidence shows the importance of attention regulation for children’s ability to cope with stressful life events. In the current chapter, we intend to provide a model for integrating research in temperament and cognitive development to understand the role played by self-regulatory processes on the development of coping responses to deal with adverse situations.

Although studies suggest that coping is central to students’ learning and achievement, and open to influence from personal and interpersonal factors, research also paints a troubling picture of normative development: During primary school, students’ coping follows a constructive trajectory, but in early adolescence, maladaptive coping rises abruptly while adaptive strategies decline; and students do not fully recover from these losses by the end of the teenage years. To make sense of these trends, we argue for a systems conceptualization that defines coping as “action regulation under stress,” and embeds action in a larger multi-level coping system. To illustrate the utility of this approach, we explore five ways it can offer insights about how social partners and ecologies can foster the healthy development of students’ academic coping. We hope to contribute to a shift to more developmental and systems-oriented conceptualizations, which we believe can better inform intervention efforts and guide future study of the development of academic coping.

Though stress is a ubiquitous experience across the lifespan, exposure to stress during infancy, childhood, and adolescence – when development is especially pronounced – has particularly salient effects on the developing brain and behavior. We review current theory regarding typical development of the neurobiological systems underlying the stress response in humans. Against this backdrop, we highlight ways in which exposure to stress can manifest in altered neurobiological development, focusing on implications for the development of frontolimbic circuitry. We emphasize the importance of harnessing a dimensional approach to investigating the impact of stress exposure and describe three features of stress exposure – stressor type, caregiver involvement, and developmental timing – as particularly important factors that may help to elucidate more precise mechanisms by which stress affects the developing brain. Finally, we review methodological considerations for further study of the neurobiological systems underlying stress and coping, and briefly review implications for both clinical practice and policy.

This chapter makes explicit the role of context and coping processes for identity formation among diverse youths. The study of coping is enriched by a human developmental theoretical approach that acknowledges the shared status of vulnerability for all humans given that encountered risks are mitigated (or not) by myriad protective factors and accompany all individuals’ developmental journeys. The application of Spencer’s phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory facilitates the study of coping strategies. The authors discuss the social ramifications of endemic economic inequality on developmental contexts, which frames the cultivation of coping strategies, i.e., whether adaptive or maladaptive; thus, experiences ultimately become incorporated into an individual’s identity. To highlight the multifaceted nature of risk, the chapter examines the experiences of Black youths in urban areas and the radiating effects of the exogenous shocks on youths’ domains of development. The authors call for new avenues of study and the provision of risk-mitigating supports to ensure cultivation of productive adaptive coping strategies, which enhance diverse youths’ positive identity outcomes.

Difficulties in coping and emotion regulatory strategies are related to both internalizing and externalizing problems in children and adolescents. Recurring, elevated irritability is a core transdiagnostic feature of these psychological problems, and has been documented to be a predictor of psychopathology. In this chapter, we discuss the role of emotion regulation and coping in the development and management of emotion disorders in childhood and the relevancy to further advancing our understanding of chronic irritability in youth. We outline two related conceptual models for irritability in children and adolescents, extended to include the role of coping, in order to have utility in further shaping the evidence base in this field. We also evaluate published treatment studies that have tested the efficacy of psychotherapy programs in managing elevated levels of irritability disturbances in children and adolescents including youth with more severe levels of symptoms captured by the disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMDD) diagnosis. Treatments with the most promising findings to date include cognitive-behavioral based programs that include individual and/or interpersonal emotion regulatory, coping, and prosocial skills training components. Given that the evidence base in this field is in its infancy, we conclude by discussing future research recommendations.

Investigations of individuals exposed to early adversity and associated atypical ontogenesis have the potential to complement, challenge, and extend developmental theories of stress and coping. In this chapter, we focus on child maltreatment as one form of early adversity to illustrate how nonnormative caregiving experiences can shape how children respond to stress over the course of development. Specifically, we argue that abusive and neglectful caregiving environments shape psychobiological systems in such a way that a) restricts access to learning experiences and executive resources requisite for more sophisticated forms of coping, and b) increases the likelihood of rudimentary coping skill utilization and involuntary stress responding. We support our argument with a review of literature on how maltreatment adversely impacts psychosocial processes and biological mechanisms (e.g., neuroendocrine, inflammation, neurocognitive, neurobiological) requisite for the healthy development of engagement coping skills (e.g., problem-solving, support-seeking) and discuss translational implications therein.

In the present chapter, coping and its development is considered from a dynamical biological systems perspective, drawing to the framework of neurovisceral integration. Higher order constituents of the central nervous system (CNS) and the autonomic nervous system (ANS) are assumed to be in dynamic interplay, enabling the organism to integrate information from within and outside the body and to flexibly adapt the regulation of cognition, perception, action, and physiology according to changing environmental demands. The underlying neural circuitry, primarily prefrontal and limbic structures, can thereby be understood as the core of coping. During development, and particularly in periods of heightened vulnerability, the capacity of the developing organism to adaptively deal with adverse experiences might be overstrained, resulting in an increased risk for pathological outcomes. Yet, as will be argued, a certain level of exposure to adversity may be required to enable later adaptive functioning, and thus coping.

We present a model and review research supporting the proposal that children’s temperamental negative reactivity and effortful control in early and middle childhood mediates and moderates the effects of experiences of family contextual stress and adversity on children’s developing coping strategies, and in turn, adjustment problems. Evidence suggests that family contextual risk contributes to increases in negative emotionality and decreases in effortful control, which in turn predict greater reliance on avoidant coping and less use of active strategies. Further, negative emotionality and lower effortful control increase the likelihood that family contextual risk factors predict greater use of avoidant coping. We highlight evidence that flexible use of active and avoidant coping may be key to children’s adjustment in response to experiences of family risk. We also examine the effects of protective family contexts in promoting effective, flexible coping. In addition, we emphasize the need for more complex models that take intersecting racial, cultural, and gender identities into account in understanding the effects of temperament and family context on children’s coping and the implications of different coping strategies for children’s adjustment.