This article summarises the tension between the rights of the child and of women who are victims of violence in the so-called special procedures for the protection of children at administrative level, investigated by means of a case study in Costa Rica between 2017 and the first quarter of 2018. The main finding was that, in the field of childhood, the state expresses its cracks and patriarchal contradictions with regard to its commitment to the human right of women to a life free of violence, who, in addition to experiencing violence by their partners, must address covert state violence in the myth of the good mother, in the figure of the best interest of the child and in a conservative instrumentality. The study also raises challenges with regard to the promotion of human rights from a gender perspective, since in the scenario studied, the social demands associated with motherhood are placed at the centre of intervention (and prosecution), concealing the perverse threads of a state which, in essence, maintains its patriarchal and classified structure intact.