During the COVID-19 pandemic, official reports of child maltreatment went down even as concerns about risk went up. This study asks parents directly what happened inside Egyptian homes. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, families across the world experienced new stressors that threatened their health and economic well-being.

Such stress may jeopardize the parents-children relationship, so the study aimed to investigate the magnitude of child physical maltreatment by parents in Egypt during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also aimed to relate child physical maltreatment to parents’ stress and identify other potential risk factors.

Amid the COVID-19 crises, increasing reports of child physical maltreatment emerged during periods of quarantine and lockdowns. In contrast, officially reported rates of child maltreatment decreased during the pandemic, possibly because social isolation reduced in-person contact with teachers, doctors, child protective services, and other professionals who mainly report such incidents.

Despite the underestimated number of maltreatment cases, public health organizations emphasized increased risk, especially among families that were abusive before the pandemic. Very few studies had addressed child physical maltreatment and parents’ stress in low and middle-income countries.

This study therefore aimed to estimate the magnitude of child physical maltreatment in an Egyptian convenience sample during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also investigated the association between child physical maltreatment and parental psychosocial stress, including stress, anxiety, and depression.

The study hypothesized a robust relation between child physical maltreatment and parents’ stress, and could generate knowledge for monitoring and evaluating family violence in low and middle-income countries. A cross-sectional research design was employed in this study.

The study group comprised a total of four hundred and four parents recruited using convenient sampling through an electronic survey link disseminated in social media Facebook groups for parents of different school types. Respondents were specified to be Egyptian parents living in Egypt, and there were no listed exclusion criteria.

Participants completed two sets of scales: the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales, or DASS-21, and the Child physical maltreatment scale, or CPMS. The scale asked parents how often they performed the listed behaviours toward their children during the past three months.

The response categories were never, one to two times, three to five times, six to ten times, and more than ten times. Midpoints of those response categories defined the frequency scores: zero for never, one point five for one to two times, four for three to five times, eight for six to ten times, and fifteen for more than ten times.

Multiple linear regression analysis was used to assess predictors of the frequency of different forms of child physical maltreatment. The confidence interval was set to ninety-five percent, and the accepted margin of error was set to five percent. The p-value was considered significant at a level below zero point zero five.

Table one profiles the four hundred and four participants, including demographics, COVID-19 experiences, parenting-related measures, and DASS-twenty-one stress, anxiety, and depression scores. The sample was predominantly mothers, married parents, highly university educated, and urban residents; the table also reports mean minor and severe CPM frequencies of four point two plus or minus six point six and one point six plus or minus four point two.

These baseline details matter because they define the population and provide context for the paper’s later analyses of predictors of child physical maltreatment. This was a cross-sectional study of Egyptian parents reporting child physical maltreatment.

A total of four hundred and four participants were enrolled: three hundred seventy-seven mothers and twenty-seven fathers, with a mean age of thirty-seven point four plus or minus five point seven years. Most participants reported middle family income, at seventy-three point five percent, and almost all lived in an urban location.

Participants were mostly married and had a higher education degree, and almost a third reported being physically abused themselves as children. The mean frequencies during the past three months were four point two plus or minus six point six times for minor CPM and one point six plus or minus four point two times for major CPM.

The most common forms were hitting a child’s hand, back, arm, or leg with a hand, reported at forty-six point three percent, followed by pinching, shaking, pushing, or shoving a child, at forty-six percent. Hitting a child elsewhere, not the buttocks, with an object was reported at fifteen point eight percent.

Twenty-two point five percent refused to mention the frequency of one or more forms of child physical maltreatment. Figure one uses DASS-21 categories to show the proportions of participants with normal, mild to moderate, and severe to extremely severe stress, anxiety, and depression.

Mild to moderate symptoms were reported by forty point one percent for stress, thirty-nine point six percent for anxiety, and forty-eight point eight percent for depression, while severe to extremely severe symptoms were reported by thirty-one point four percent, forty-seven percent, and thirty point two percent, respectively.

This matters because it shows the substantial share of participants reporting symptoms across all three domains. Table two reports correlations between minor or severe CPM frequency and demographic, COVID-related, definitional, and DASS-21 measures. Minor CPM frequency was negatively correlated with parent age, with r equal to negative zero point one two seven and P-value zero point zero one one, and positively correlated with stress, anxiety, and depression scores; anxiety had r equal to zero point two zero seven and P-value less than zero point zero zero one.

Severe CPM frequency showed significant associations with youngest-child age, number of children, online education, and anxiety, while parental severe CPM definition was not significantly correlated. Variables with a significant correlation with the frequency of both forms of child physical maltreatment during the past three months were included in the multiple regression analysis.

For minor CPM frequency, the age of the youngest child, minor CPM definition score, and anxiety score were significant predictors. For severe CPM frequency, the age of the youngest child, number of children, online school education ratings, and anxiety score remained significant.

Table three reports two multiple regression models predicting minor and severe CPM frequency over the past three months. For minor CPM, significant predictors included the age of the youngest child, minor CPM definition score, and anxiety score, while age of parent, stress, and depression were not significant.

For severe CPM, significant predictors were number of children, age of the youngest child, school online education rating, and anxiety score. This matters because it shows which variables remained associated with each outcome after being considered together. Figure two shows how participants classified seven corporal punishment behaviors as abusive, unsure, or not abusive.

The chart reports that not-abusive responses ranged from five point four percent for pinching, shaking, pushing, or shoving a child to thirty-eight point six percent for hitting a child’s buttocks with a hand, while severe behaviors also received substantial not-abusive classifications, including thirty-five point nine percent for hitting the buttocks with an object.

This matters because it reveals variation in how parents define corporal punishment as abuse. Although the CPM rates were apparently common in this study, they were mostly minimum estimates of the actual figures. Because the study was observational and lacked pre-pandemic data for comparison, it was difficult to draw causal inferences.

Because the study used a convenience sample, its results lack generalizability and should not automatically be treated as representative of the wider population. The study assessed only physical maltreatment, not emotional abuse, neglect, or sexual abuse, and some parents may have refrained from reporting CPM behaviours because of shame.

In this Egyptian convenience sample, parent-reported CPM was common, and anxiety was associated with both minor and severe forms. The findings point to support and non-violent parenting interventions, while remaining limited by the study design and reporting barriers.