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
"most people think parents have a right to do a whole lot of awful things to their children beyond just hitting them, like . . . controlling their access to information, and deciding what/when/if they eat,"
What the actual fuck? Preventing my child from accessing material that is too violent or too sexual is child abuse? Deciding when meal time is and what will be served is child abuse? (Denying them food of course is child abuse.) So someone should call the cops because I don't like my 8-year-old watch "A Clockwork Orange" or eat a cup of sugar for breakfast? The person who wrote that sentence if fucked in the head.
So when I wrote that I was thinking about things like parents trying to indoctrinate their children into following their own worldview by preventing them from having real information about other points of view and generally isolating their children to facilitate broader abuse.
For example, parents who are hardcore religious fanatics raising their children to have slave-like obedience to the parents' religious beliefs and being banned from learning about stuff like the theory of evolution or texts about religious abuse that could help them understand their situation.
Or, to give another example, parents who try to prevent their children from learning that queer people even exist at all, or otherwise acquiring any information that could cause them to reject the bigotries that the parents wish to promote. This is not hypothetical, it is common across multiple cultures in different continents.
However, I do also think that if a minor wants to watch A Clockwork Orange or whatever that is 100% fine. What do you think is realistically going to happen if they do?
Learning about uncomfortable topics through fiction you have a complete ability to just put down and walk away from is the single safest way to do it if anything, and people do need to learn because it can have applicability to their daily lives, even for things that you might assume are too "mature" for them. Children can grow up having to deal with practically all the horrible things people consider to be "for adults only" and it is useful for them to have access to information on that.
Ignorance does not protect anyone, knowledge does. People who try to deny access to information under the guise of "protection" actually seek control in practice.