Post-Apartheid South African Children’s Coping with Daily Hassles: Relation to Psychological Adjustment

Abstract

Prior research has highlighted the significant impact various types of stress and coping strategies can have on children’s psychological adjustment, yet little is known about the daily experiences of stress and coping in children living in South Africa today. This study investigated whether ‘daily hassles’—the minor yet potentially distressing demands of everyday life—and coping were able to predict children’s concurrent psychological adjustment, and whether different coping strategies moderated the hassles-adjustment relationship. Daily hassles, coping strategy use, depressive symptoms, and social and adaptive functioning were assessed in a sample of 86 children (aged 9–13 years) from two primary schools in Cape Town, South Africa. Although daily hassles positively predicted depressive symptoms, children’s coping repertoires (combination of various coping strategies) played a more important role in predicting psychosocial adjustment. Avoidance, generally presumed to be a maladaptive coping strategy, was related to better adjustment (fewer depressive symptoms and higher social and adaptive functioning) under conditions of low perceived stress, indicating that this coping strategy may serve as a buffer against the common, normative stressors characteristic of children’s daily lives. Our findings suggest that children’s ability to learn under which conditions particular coping strategies are most effective—in resolving the stressful situation and the negative emotions associated with it—would be critical to their psychological and social well-being.