In the early 1970s, the phrase “child abuse” had just entered the cultural lexicon. “There is hardly a more heinous crime than the brutal abuse of children by adults to whom they look for love and protection,” read a New York Times editorial in 1969. “Society has been shamefully late in coming to their protection.” Startled out of their obliviousness, Americans suddenly began to see child abuse everywhere, and a consensus emerged that something had to be done.

Two paths lay at the nation’s feet, and which one we took would depend on whether we thought the problem was more socioeconomic or more psychological. If socioeconomic, then the solution was to make a major public investment in universal social programs to assist parents and children alike — that is, to focus on the external environments that foster abuse. But if the problem was more psychological, the solution would entail a greater focus on internal environments, in the form of identifying and criminalizing perpetrators.

We opted for the latter. And now, several decades and moral panics later, the most substantial legacy of the modern awakening to child abuse is a raft of punitive laws designed to root out and punish pedophiles. It was a missed opportunity: the provocations of the child abuse moment could have resulted in universal preschool instead.