Development of Maladaptive Coping: A Functional Adaptation to Chronic, Uncontrollable Stress

• Published in: Child development perspectives Vol. 9; no. 2; pp. 96 - 100
• Main Author: Wadsworth, Martha E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-06-2015; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: allostatic load; coping; environmental context; functional adaptation; self-regulation; Stress; stress reactivity; self-regulation; stress reactivity; allostatic load; functional adaptation; coping; environmental context
• ISSN: 1750-8592; 1750-8606
• DOI: 10.1111/cdep.12112

Health disparities are rooted in childhood and stem from adverse early environments that damage physiologic stress‐response systems. Developmental psychobiological models of the effects of chronic stress account for both the negative effects of a stress‐response system calibrated to a dangerous and unpredictable environment from a health perspective, and the positive effects of such an adaptively calibrated stress response from a functional perspective. Our research suggests that the contexts that produce functionally adapted physiologic responses to stress also encourage a functionally adapted coping response—coping that can result in maladjustment in physical and mental health, but enables children to grow and develop within those contexts. In this article, I highlight the value of reframing maladaptive coping as functional adaptation to understand more completely the development of children's coping in different contexts, and the value of such a conceptual shift for coping‐based theory, research, and intervention.