In 1996, the U.S. Congress abolished the Aid to Families of Dependent Children program begun in 1935 as a provision of the landmark Social Security Act. Some quickly predicted that the “end of welfare” would also reduce child abuse. Patrick Murphy, Public Guardian of Cook County, Illinois, could not contain his enthusiasm. American welfare systems, he confidently predicted, would no longer send an “illusory promise” to “inexperienced girls that they and their children would be supported for the rest of their lives.” That promise had encouraged too many poor women to bear and then abuse too many children. As had many before him, Murphy placed undue blame for child abuse on single mothers.

Moreover, at century's end, the welfare revolution was only four years old, and massive reductions in numbers of recipients coincided with record prosperity. Certainly no one yet could make more than anecdotal connections between changes in state aid to dependent children and incidence of child abuse. But a larger conclusion could be made. Most promises of government aid to impoverished young Americans involved illusions – overconfidence in the generosity of public benefits or unwarranted faith that a twentieth-century woman without an adult partner could usually escape poverty through paid labor.

If twentieth-century portraits of juvenile criminals were exaggerated, and profiles of abused children misidentified, the poor child disappeared into the shadows. Debates about policies purportedly designed to help economically disadvantaged children focused, instead, on the morality, marital status, and employability of their mothers.