Objective: To quantitatively study the exposure to childhood maltreatment and urban violence in children from families with at least one child working on the streets and to investigate the relationship between these factors and street work. Methods: Families who participated in a nongovernmental organization (NGO) program to eliminate child labor were included. Data concerning sociodemographic characteristics, punishment methods used in the family environment against the children, five types of abuse and neglect perpetrated by the caregivers, urban violence exposure and family functioning were collected. Results: The sample included 126 children who were working on the streets and 65 siblings who were not working on the streets. Caregivers reported high levels of severe physical punishment. The children reported high levels of abuse and neglect, and high levels of urban violence exposure. The families showed a predominance of dysfunctional and unsatisfactory relationships. A multiple logistic regression model showed that age older than 12 years and severe physical punishment at home were associated with street work. Conclusion: Interventions to decrease the risk of child street work should be family-focused and should aim to reduce violence in the family environment.

O autor aborda a falta de uma visão integrativa do ser humano que existe no estudo da neurociência e da psicanálise, em face da educação e da cultura fundamentadas sobre o paradigma da fragmentação. Essa visão fragmentada leva os estudiosos a desconsiderar a unidade sobre a qual se desdobraram os fatos e os fenômenos subseqüentes no processo de desenvolvimento e evolução dos seres vivos. O autor toma o instinto de sobrevivência, que é inerente à própria vida e a todo ser vivo, como a unidade que está na base de todos os fenômenos orgânicos e mentais e tenta estudar suas expressões, integrando fenômenos neurobiológicos e psicológicos, que são indissociáveis, de acordo com a visão de auto-regulação concebida por Freud.

The author has reported his own apprehensions about the lack of integrative vision in the study of neurosciences and psychoanalysis, related to the fact that our education and culture are based on the paradigm of fragmentation. The consequence of this fragmented vision is that the specialist can not capture the unity of the facts and the subsequent phenomena within the process of development and evolution. The author has taken the survival instinct that is inherent to life itself and to all live beings as a basis that is common to all organic and mental phenomena and tries to study their expressions, integrating neurobiological and psychological phenomena, which are inseparable, within the vision of self-regulation conceived by Freud.