Objective To systematically review and analyze the risk factors of epilepsy in children, to explore the related etiology of epilepsy in children, and to provide evidence-based strategies for reducing the occurrence of epilepsy in children. Methods PubMed, Embase, VIP, CNKI, Web of science, Cohrane, and CBM were searched for relevant studies on risk factors for childhood epilepsy since the establishment of the database, and the study type was selected as a case-control study. After screening and quality evaluation, the literatures that met the requirements were finally selected for inclusion in the study, and the extracted target data were statistically analyzed by RevMan5.3 software. Results A total of 9 literatures were included for Meta-analysis of the risk factors of epilepsy in children. A total of 3792 cases were studied, including 1 922 cases in the control group and 1 870 cases in the case group. Meta-analysis results showed that adverse perinatal period, family history of epilepsy, febrile seizures, and central nervous system infection were closely related to the occurrence of epilepsy in children, and the OR values were OR=3.46, 95%CI (2.51, 4.79), OR=4.77, 95%CI (3.83, 5.95), OR=7.81, 95%CI ( 5.64, 10.80), OR=3.00, 95%CI (1.44, 6.26), P values were all less than 0.05. Conclusions Adverse perinatal period, family history of epilepsy, febrile seizures, and central nervous system infection are the current risk factors for childhood epilepsy.