Child abuse has negative outcome in children and adolescents that can extent into adulthood, which is a significant problem and needs an effective means of prevention. Child abuse comprises of a wide range of maltreatment including physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and neglect. Increased number of child abuse case has been observed in the community. Among them children whose parents, especially mothers were not aware of the problems of child abuse. A Quantitative exploratory research was done with the objectives of assessment of knowledge of mothers regarding child abuse and to associate findings with the selected socio-demographic variables. The research design adopted for this study was descriptive design. The research study was conducted in selected rural area of Pune District. Data collection was carried out in the month of October, 2017. Sample of 100 mothers were taken. Tool used were questionnaire consist of two sections. First section included variables for age, level of education, occupation, type of family and age of youngest child were assessed. Second section included 15 items on knowledge assessment on child abuse with scoring on adequate knowledge (8-15) and inadequate knowledge (0-7). The reliability was done by Karl Pearson correlation co-efficient formula. The gathered data were analysed by frequency and percentage. Findings depicts the majority of mothers (48%) were in age group of 20-30 years, 46% of these mothers had primary level of education, most of them(62%) were farmers, 66% of these mothers were living in nuclear families and youngest child of 49% mothers was less than five years of age. 70% mothers had adequate knowledge.
