Matchplay and Firesetting in Children: Relationship to Parent, Marital, and Family Dysfunction

Extends prior work suggesting a relationship between childhood firesetting and parental and family dysfunction. Children recruited from nonpatient, outpatient, and inpatient populations were classified into firesetter (n = 198), matchplayer (n = 40), or no fire (n = 239) groups. Parents of firesetters reported more psychological distress, marital disagreement, and exposure to stressful life events, and less child acceptance, monitoring, discipline, and involvement in activities that enhance the child's personal development and family relationships, than nonfiresetters. Firesetting children characterized their parents' child rearing practices as involving lax discipline, nonenforcement, and anxiety induction. The scores for matchplayers generally fell between those of the other two groups.