A concept some of us have been pushing for decades has suddenly become a centerpiece of the child welfare debate: Family policing agencies routinely confuse poverty with neglect. It follows, therefore, that an enormous amount of what we call “child maltreatment” can be solved through a two-step process.
1. Find the poor people.
2. Send money.
Research bears this out. Or, as one speaker at a recent symposium put it “It’s not rocket science.”
That was challenged by another speaker at the same symposium: Michael Wald, professor emeritus of law at Stanford University. ...
