Ways and Families of Coping as Adaptive Processes

Abstract

Ways of coping are building blocks in the coping area, describing people’s actual behavioral, emotional, and cognitive actions in response to stress. Hundreds of ways of coping have been studied, but until recently theories and measures did not converge on a comprehensive set of core coping categories. Recent conceptual and empirical analyses have identified approximately a dozen core families, each of which serves multiple functions in dealing with stress. The discovery of how those functions can be achieved through different ways of coping at different developmental levels may allow the identification and study of age-graded ways of coping within a family. Although coping researchers have seemed reluctant to take a stand about which of these families or ways of coping are adaptive and maladaptive, it is possible to make such a determination using multiple criteria, including the current subjective state of the actor, as well as the qualities of the coping itself and its long-term consequences. These criteria converge on labeling six families as generally adaptive (namely, problem-solving, information-seeking, support-seeking, self-comforting, accommodation, and negotiation) and six as generally maladaptive (namely, helplessness, escape, social isolation, delegation, submission, and opposition). At the same time, a developmental perspective cautions against conclusions about whether a specific stressful encounter is “bad” or “good” until after its effects on development are observed. If children and adolescents, with the support of adults, learn from episodes during which they coped “poorly,” such encounters can provide important opportunities to add resources for use in subsequent coping episodes.