Children and Fireplay: a Description and Prevention Communication (Michigan).

The phenomenon of children playing with fire or setting fires is of interest to parents, fire agencies, and mental health agencies. This study replicates earlier work on fire as a childhood accident event and probes parental aspects of the issue on a stratified r and om sample of the Detroit metropolitan area. Children and their family contexts are examined as the nature of the problem (children playing with fires) and also as the target for communication programs to mitigate the problem. One in five of the Detroit families reported a child involved with fire, averaging 6.4 years old at the time, primarily playing with matches. Female children were involved in fireplay. Family size, composition, income and other demographic variables did not relate to the incidence of fireplay. The same was true for several measures of child rearing practices. Children who caused fires tended to be troublesome for their parents although the parents reported they got along well with the child. Fathers as respondents tended to be married and White whereas mothers tended (slightly) to be single and Black. There was a slight tendency for single parent families to have experienced fireplay by a child. Indirectly, then, factors related to single parent families, such as low income, are related to the incidence of fireplay. The implications are that children engage play behaviors involving fire, often at ages far younger than parents expect. The phenomenon appers to fit an exposure-coping model of (fire) accidents. Mitigation would focus on skill or competency training, emphasizing parent-child roles in the process.PhDMass communicationUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161365/1/8712077.pd