Review: The development of coping across childhood and adolescence: An integrative review and critique of research

TLDR

Coping development is universally acknowledged, yet integrating age differences is hampered by studies that use unselected age groups and overlapping coping categories. The authors applied a developmental framework to 58 coping studies, reviewing over 250 age comparisons to identify common developmental shifts in strategies such as problem‑solving, distraction, support‑seeking, and escape. They found that coping capacities rise with age—support‑seeking shifts from adult reliance to self‑reliance, problem‑solving becomes more planful, and distraction incorporates cognitive tactics—while also noting that children learn to deploy the most effective strategies for specific stressors, leading to guidelines for future research.

Abstract

Despite consensus that development shapes every aspect of coping, studies of age differences in coping have proven difficult to integrate, primarily because they examine largely unselected age groups, and utilize overlapping coping categories. A developmental framework was used to organize 58 studies of coping involving over 250 age comparisons or correlations with age. The framework was based on (1) conceptualizations of coping as regulation to suggest ages at which coping should show developmental shifts (Skinner & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2009), and (2) notions of hierarchical families to clarify which coping categories should be distinguished at each age (Skinner, Edge, Altman, & Sherwood, 2003). Developmental patterns in coping (e.g., problem-solving, distraction, support-seeking, escape) were scrutinized with a focus on common age shifts. Two kinds of age trends were discerned, one reflecting increases in coping capacities, as seen in support-seeking (from reliance on adults to more self-reliance), problem-solving (from instrumental action to planful problem-solving), and distraction (adding cognitive to behavioural strategies); and one reflecting improvements in the deployment of different coping strategies according to which ones are most effective in dealing with specific kinds of stressors. Results were used to formulate guidelines for future research on the development of coping.