Objective To understand the current status of preschool children’s parents’ awareness of child health care knowledge, and analyze its influencing factors, providing evidence for exploring health care service strategies for preschool children.

Methods A total of 997 cases of parents of preschool children who underwent health checkups at the Child Health Clinic of Northwest Women’s and Children’s Hospital from August 2023 to January 2024 were selected as the survey subjects. The demographic characteristics of children’s parents, their knowledge of child health care, and their access to it were collected through the self-administered Child Health Care Knowledge Questionnaire through the Chinese questionnaire platform (www.wjx.cn). A binary logistic regression model was used to analyze the relevant influencing factors.

Results A total of 981 effective questionnaires were collected, with a recovery rate of 98.40%. The awareness rate of child health care knowledge among parents of preschool children was 32.01% (314/981), with the awareness rates of proper physical activity time and frequency, children’s visual acuity and oral health, appropriate time and frequency of watching electronic video, and abnormal growth and development of preschool children were all less than 50%. Medical staff and WeChat/Tik Tok/Baidu platforms were the common channels for children’s parents to obtain health care knowledge, accounting for 56.47% and 55.66%, respectively. Univariate analysis showed that there were statistically significant differences among different educational levels, occupations and types of knowledge acquisition channels (P < 0.05). Logistic analysis results showed that education level and types of knowledge acquisition channels were influencing factors of preschool children’s parents’ awareness of child health care knowledge. The awareness rate of child health care knowledge was high among parents of preschool children with a college degree or above (OR = 2.812, 95% CI: 1.190 − 6.649), and multiple ways to acquire knowledge (OR = 2.826, 95% CI: 1.143 − 6.990) (P < 0.05).

Conclusion Parents of preschool children have a low awareness rate of child health care knowledge, which is affected by factors such as educational level and types of knowledge acquisition channels. It is necessary to perform child health care knowledge education through multiple channels according to different characteristics of the population to improve the parenting level of parents.