Parents' self-reporting of child physical maltreatment in Yuncheng City, China

To investigate the prevalence of child physical maltreatment (CPM) by parents in a city locating in central-western region of China and identify associated risk factors.

Cross-sectional survey was carried out among a randomly sampled population of primary school students' parents in Yuncheng City. Data on parental CPM during the past 3 months, definition of CPM, Parenting Scale, parent-child interaction attitudes, social support, socio-demographic background were collected by a self-report questionnaire. Logistic regression analyses were used to investigate the associations between CPM and related risk factors.

Of parents from 1,394 primary school students, there were 595 (42.7%) and 301 (21.6%) of them reported that they had minor/severe CPM behaviors toward their children during the past 3 months, respectively. The risk factors that were significantly associated with both prevalence and frequencies of minor/severe CPM included child problem behaviors, overreactivity and hostility parenting.

CPM by parents is not uncommon in China. More attention should be paid to programs that help parents learn parenting skills and use nonviolent child discipline.