diff --git a/Lib/dataclasses.py b/Lib/dataclasses.py
index 9135b07c9f259a..f86111f330c844 100644
--- a/Lib/dataclasses.py
+++ b/Lib/dataclasses.py
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@
 import keyword
 import builtins
 import functools
+import collections
 import _thread
 
 
@@ -1024,7 +1025,7 @@ def is_dataclass(obj):
     return hasattr(cls, _FIELDS)
 
 
-def asdict(obj, *, dict_factory=dict):
+def asdict(obj, *, dict_factory=dict, transformers=None):
     """Return the fields of a dataclass instance as a new dictionary mapping
     field names to field values.
 
@@ -1045,48 +1046,58 @@ class C:
     """
     if not _is_dataclass_instance(obj):
         raise TypeError("asdict() should be called on dataclass instances")
-    return _asdict_inner(obj, dict_factory)
+    if transformers is None:
+        transformers = _DEFAULT_TRANFORMERS
+    else:
+        transformers = tuple(transformers) + _DEFAULT_TRANFORMERS
+
+    return _asdict_inner(obj, dict_factory, transformers)
+
+def _handle_dataclass(obj, asdict_inner):
+    result = []
+    for f in fields(obj):
+        value = asdict_inner(getattr(obj, f.name))
+        result.append((f.name, value))
+    return asdict_inner.dict_factory(result)
+
+def _handle_sequence(obj, asdict_inner):
+    return type(obj)(map(asdict_inner, obj))
+
+def _handle_dict(obj, asdict_inner):
+    return type(obj)(((asdict_inner(k), asdict_inner(v))
+                      for k, v in obj.items()))
+
+def _handle_defaultdict(obj, asdict_inner):
+    return type(obj)(obj.default_factory,
+                     ((asdict_inner(k), asdict_inner(v))
+                      for k, v in obj.items()))
+
+def _handle_namedtuple(obj, asdict_inner):
+    return type(obj)(*map(asdict_inner, obj))
+
+_DEFAULT_TRANFORMERS = (
+    (_is_dataclass_instance, _handle_dataclass),
+    (lambda obj: isinstance(obj, tuple) and hasattr(obj, "_fields"),
+     _handle_namedtuple),
+    ((tuple, list), _handle_sequence),
+    (collections.defaultdict, _handle_defaultdict),
+    (dict, _handle_dict),
+)
+
+def _asdict_inner(obj, dict_factory, transformers):
+    def asdict_inner(obj):
+        for cond, transformer in transformers:
+            if isinstance(cond, (type, tuple)):
+                if isinstance(obj, cond):
+                    return transformer(obj, asdict_inner)
+            elif cond(obj):
+                return transformer(obj, asdict_inner)
 
+        return copy.deepcopy(obj)
 
-def _asdict_inner(obj, dict_factory):
-    if _is_dataclass_instance(obj):
-        result = []
-        for f in fields(obj):
-            value = _asdict_inner(getattr(obj, f.name), dict_factory)
-            result.append((f.name, value))
-        return dict_factory(result)
-    elif isinstance(obj, tuple) and hasattr(obj, '_fields'):
-        # obj is a namedtuple.  Recurse into it, but the returned
-        # object is another namedtuple of the same type.  This is
-        # similar to how other list- or tuple-derived classes are
-        # treated (see below), but we just need to create them
-        # differently because a namedtuple's __init__ needs to be
-        # called differently (see bpo-34363).
+    asdict_inner.dict_factory = dict_factory
 
-        # I'm not using namedtuple's _asdict()
-        # method, because:
-        # - it does not recurse in to the namedtuple fields and
-        #   convert them to dicts (using dict_factory).
-        # - I don't actually want to return a dict here.  The the main
-        #   use case here is json.dumps, and it handles converting
-        #   namedtuples to lists.  Admittedly we're losing some
-        #   information here when we produce a json list instead of a
-        #   dict.  Note that if we returned dicts here instead of
-        #   namedtuples, we could no longer call asdict() on a data
-        #   structure where a namedtuple was used as a dict key.
-
-        return type(obj)(*[_asdict_inner(v, dict_factory) for v in obj])
-    elif isinstance(obj, (list, tuple)):
-        # Assume we can create an object of this type by passing in a
-        # generator (which is not true for namedtuples, handled
-        # above).
-        return type(obj)(_asdict_inner(v, dict_factory) for v in obj)
-    elif isinstance(obj, dict):
-        return type(obj)((_asdict_inner(k, dict_factory),
-                          _asdict_inner(v, dict_factory))
-                         for k, v in obj.items())
-    else:
-        return copy.deepcopy(obj)
+    return asdict_inner(obj)
 
 
 def astuple(obj, *, tuple_factory=tuple):
diff --git a/Lib/test/test_dataclasses.py b/Lib/test/test_dataclasses.py
index 037bf4c2214279..a59714ddf78c94 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_dataclasses.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_dataclasses.py
@@ -1652,6 +1652,18 @@ class C:
         t = astuple(c, tuple_factory=list)
         self.assertEqual(t, ['outer', T(1, ['inner', T(11, 12, 13)], 2)])
 
+    def test_helper_asdict_defaultdict(self):
+        @dataclass
+        class C:
+            d: dict
+
+        from collections import defaultdict
+        c = C(defaultdict(int))
+        self.assertEqual(asdict(c), {
+            'd': defaultdict(int)
+        })
+
+
     def test_dynamic_class_creation(self):
         cls_dict = {'__annotations__': {'x': int, 'y': int},
                     }