For more than a century, media coverage of incidents of cruelty to children have produced moral panics that have resulted in changes in public policy. These shifts have gone in varying directions, establishing the principles both that government agencies have the right to intervene to remove children from abusive or neglectful families and that remaining with the natural parents is in the child's best interests. Scandals involving abused children in the 1970's and 1980's have prompted media coverage and further brief moral panics. The special issue of "Feminist Review" is designed to present feminist perspectives and more thorough analyses than are presented in the media. Notes and 11 references