Infant Coping With Everyday Stressful Events

Mothers of 60 infants (5 boys and 5 girls at ages 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 months) were interviewed to determine how their infants typically respond to 49 potentially stressful everyday events. Older infants and more temperamentally difficult infants experienced more events and reacted with distress to a greater proportion of the experienced events. Older infants also were more likely than younger infants to react to stressors with a greater variety of coping strategies and to engage in problem-focused independent coping, aided coping, and extreme behaviors; they were less likely to show no coping attempt or to respond physiologically to stress. Mothers of older infants were less likely to soothe their infants or eliminate stressors for them and were more likely to provide information to their infants than were mothers of younger infants. The development of stress reactivity and coping strategies during infancy is discussed.