[Risk factors of child abuse and neglect in childhood]

Among factors identified as being statistically associated with child abuse, we can broadly distinguish those related to characteristics of the child itself and those related to family characteristics, bearing in mind that parents are the perpetrators of child abuse in the vast majority of cases. Observed among children are: young age (abuse begins very early in life); male sex, as concerns shaken baby syndrome and lethal violence; the presence of mental disability and/or behavioural disorders; and particularly frequently, prematurity, especially if it requires neonatal hospitalisation. In fact, any circumstance that makes early attachment between the newborn and its parents difficult or impossible, such as prematurity or postpartum depression, constitutes a situation of risk for subsequent child abuse. Among parents, psycho-affective factors take precedence over socio-economic factors, which play no role. Child abuse is found in all social classes, as is the transgenerational transmission of violence, with those parents having suffered from abuse as children being more at risk than others of becoming abusive themselves.