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Child maltreatment is a global public health and child rights crisis made worse by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While understanding the breadth of the child maltreatment crisis is foundational to informing prevention and response efforts, determining accurate estimates of child maltreatment remains challenging. Alternative informants (parents, caregivers, a Person Most Knowledgeable—PMK) are often tasked with reporting on children’s maltreatment experiences in surveys to mitigate concerns associated with reporting child maltreatment. The overall purpose of this study was to examine child maltreatment reporting practices in surveys by PMKs for children and youth. The research question is: “What is the nature of the evidence of child maltreatment reporting practices in general population surveys by PMKs for children and youth?” A rapid scoping review was conducted to achieve the study’s purpose. A search strategy was conducted in nine databases (e.g., MEDLINE, EBSCO, Scopus, Global Health, ProQuest). The findings from this review indicate that most studies involved PMK informants (i.e., maternal caregivers), included representative samples from primarily Western contexts, and utilized validated measures to assess child maltreatment. Half of the studies assessed involved multi-informant reports, including the PMKs and child/youth. Overall, the congruence between PMK-reported and child/youth-reported child maltreatment experiences was low-to-fair/moderate, and children/youth reported more maltreatment than the PMKs.

The current evidence indicates that spanking is harmful to children’s health and development and should never be used by parents or other caregivers. However, the critical factors that inform effective spanking prevention strategies are still not well understood. The objective of the current study was to determine if a parent’s own adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) history was associated with increased likelihood of reporting their child being spanked at age 10 or younger. Data were drawn from the Well-Being and Experiences Study (the WE Study), a community survey of parents and adolescents from 2017–2018 (N = 1000) from Canada. The results indicated that a parent’s own history of physical abuse, emotional abuse, spanking, and household mental illness in childhood were associated with an increased likelihood that their child would have been spanked. These findings indicate that a parent’s ACEs history may be related to how their own child is parented and identify families who may be more likely to rely on spanking. Preventing physical punishment is necessary for healthy child development, reducing the risk of further violence, and upholding children’s rights to protection. Parent’s ACEs history may be an important factor to consider when developing and implementing child maltreatment prevention efforts.