Problem #1 regarding child abuse is that a lot of people seem to struggle to imagine normal, respectable-looking parents and other authority figures ever doing it despite the statistics so instead they do the stranger danger panic and completely overlook some of the greatest threats.
Problem #2 is that even when people understand, even if in an abstract way, that parents can be abusive they just... don't seem to actually register that as something that can apply to real life. It's just hypothetical to them and doesn't actually guide their ideas of how to prevent child abuse.
Problem #3 is that even after overcoming the above biases a lot of people have a very narrow image of what abusive parenting is where they imagine like... people doing violent things basically out of sadism and without provocation. They don't seem to think it's "real" abuse if the victim did something that "justifies" punitive violence, like disobeying the parents.
In fact, most people think parents have a right to do a whole lot of awful things to their children beyond just hitting them, like violating their privacy, controlling their access to information, and deciding what/when/if they eat, among other things.
Only the countries in red have banned child corporal punishment.
You might notice that for starters not a single one of the top 5 most populous countries in the world (representing 45% of the world population just by themselves) has a ban.
Globally speaking, most of the children in the world live in places where it is legal to hit them (up to 86% are not protected by law as of last year, according to UNICEF) and even where they have legal protections there is the matter of social acceptance and enforcement.
We can't even get people to stop making "cute" memes about how "la chancla" and "el cincho" ostensibly fix children.
We are not even close to escaping this hole.
i remember there being a couple of posts on here that got fairly popular presenting not hitting your kids as like a "white people thing (derogatory)". Literally woke apologia for hitting kids.
as someone living in a country where it is in fact forbidden to physically punish your children the first thing my mum taught me was that it is not only important that the parents know it is illegal but also that the CHILDREN know. as a small child or even as an older child who gets punished physically the chances that you actually know that what's happening isn't just Wrong but also Officially Illegal are slim to none. so i've been witness to her going up to parents who were threatening or hitting their children more than once. every time she told them very politely "hi sorry, i hope you're aware that it is illegal to hit your children. should i call the police or will you stop doing that on your own?" and the parents would look super pissed off but the kids would look very suddenly very interested. especially older sisters always seem to take the information that it is in fact okay to call the police if being hit by their parents very seriously. and one time my mum did call the cops. on our neighbour. never saw that guy again but his son to this day comes over to say hello every time he's in town. so be kind to your children. protect other people's children and help them protect themselves too.
protecting children from violence: much more radical than it really ought to be at this point
