From the author: The article was written in co-authorship with a lawyer from the Krasnodar region, historian Anton Nikolaevich Mosin. Statement of the problem It is no secret that raising a child is a complex and labor-intensive process that requires parents to exert effort, both material, physical and mental. In such conditions, parents inevitably experience an accumulation of fatigue, emotional burnout and crisis situations, which in turn can lead to child abuse. What is “child abuse” and do all parents understand this term correctly? For most ordinary people, “abuse” is identical to the use of physical or sexual violence against a child. In turn, jurisprudence provides a fairly broad and comprehensive definition of “child abuse.” So according to Art. 19 of the “Convention on the Rights of the Child” of November 20, 1989, child abuse is all forms of physical or psychological violence, insult or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, abuse or exploitation, including sexual abuse, by parents, legal guardians or any other person caring for the child. Article 5 of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” of December 10, 1948 proclaims that “no one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The ninth principle of the “Declaration of the Rights of the Child” of November 20, 1959 states that the child must be protected from “all forms of neglect, cruelty and exploitation.” Russian legislation also contains the concept of “cruel treatment,” so the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the Federal Law of July 24, 1998 No. 124-FZ “On Basic Guarantees of the Rights of the Child in the Russian Federation” establish norms according to which “a child should not be subjected to torture, violence, other cruel or degrading treatment or punishment" on the territory of Russia, the Family Code of the Russian Federation guarantees the child’s right to respect for his human dignity and protection of his interests in the guardianship and trusteeship authorities (up to the age of 14) and in court (after 14 years. ). There is also criminal liability for child abuse. Thus, we can conclude that from a legal point of view, the concept of “child abuse” includes not only physical and sexual violence, but also an insult to human dignity, mental violence, neglect , neglect, exploitation, application of punishment not provided for by law. That is, from a legislative point of view, the definition of “cruelty” includes many purely psychological manifestations, usually not recognized by parents as cruelty. As the practice of communicating with parents shows, even in prosperous families, where the child is surrounded by sincere love and affection from loved ones, in the educational process Such forms of influence on the child may be used as corporal punishment, intimidation, depriving the child of communication with peers or outings. What can we say about dysfunctional families, where children are often subjected to physical, mental and sexual violence. At the same time, most parents do not understand that such methods of education are a violation of children’s rights, as well as the reason for the formation of possible deviations in the mental and physical development of the child. According to statistics of appeals to the Commissioner for Children’s Rights of the Russian Federation, most violations of children’s rights occur due to a rather vague ideas of children, their parents or guardians about the rights of the child and ways to protect these rights. In this regard, the question arises: are all parents equally capable of overcoming the difficulties of raising their own children without infringing on their rights, or is there some relationship between the level of general legal literacy of the parent and his attitude to the crueltreatment of children. The hypothesis for this study was the assumption that the general level of legal awareness of parents is, in one way or another, related to their attitude and complete understanding of the term “child abuse.” The empirical basis of the study was the parents of children of preschool and primary school age ( 30 people). The vast majority of respondents, 89%, were women aged 25 to 40 years. 11% are men aged 27 to 45. 57% of parents have higher education. 6% of respondents have two or more higher educations or an academic degree, 21% graduated from secondary specialized educational institutions, 16% have secondary education. Methodological tools In accordance with the hypothesis put forward, a set of methods necessary for conducting the study was identified: theoretical (analysis of international and Russian normative- legal acts) and empirical (observation; conversation; survey; questionnaire; method of generalized independent characteristics). The comparative method was used as the organizational principle for constructing the study. A comparison of data received from respondents belonging to different social groups with different levels of education and material income was used to identify patterns and differences in attitudes towards child abuse. Mathematical processing of the obtained empirical data included calculating average values, range, standard deviation, as well as conducting intergroup comparisons. Research results During the study, several interesting features were established: 100% of parents condemned child abuse, 63% assured that they had never infringed their children have the rights, 23% admitted that they are sometimes unjustifiably cruel to children, 14% said that some cruelty is simply necessary to maintain the authority of the parent and this is not a violation of the child’s rights, but will benefit him. Similar results with visible homogeneity shows some differentiation in the attitude and understanding of cruelty among the respondents. That is, despite the general condemnation of child abuse, more than a third of parents confirmed that they are cruel to their children, and 14% did not see any wrongfulness in their actions. Regarding the level of legal awareness of parents regarding the rights of children and existing sanctions for their violation, 34% of parents believed that responsibility exists only for harm to the child’s health and sexual violence, and it is these actions that can be classified as “child abuse”, excluding others elements from this concept. 48% believe that raising and the burden of supporting a child gives a parent the full right to use physical force on him and restrict his freedom, for example, locking him in the bathroom for bad behavior or prohibiting him from leaving the house in his free time, and deprivation of parental rights if he has housing and material well-being in the family even if the fact of beating a child is discovered is impossible and, as a result, should not be recognized as child abuse. Only 18% of respondents, along with the above elements, recognized as “child abuse” psychological violence and humiliation of a child’s human dignity and thus gave the most complete definition of this term from a legal point of view. Thus, we can conclude that the vast majority of respondents perceive ill-treatment of a child only as causing obvious harm to health, completely overlooking psychological pressure as an act of violence against the individual. This group of respondents does not perceive insults, incontinence and authoritarianism of their own behavior in the educational process as the cause of problems in communicating with their own children. As a consequence, poor controllability and learning ability of the latter are seen by them as a manifestation of laziness or underdevelopment of the child’s cognitive functions. Although it can be assumed.