In this article, I describe a case in which a mother and her son, while discussing what they perceive to be the purpose of the Argentinian conditional cash transfer programme known as the ‘Universal Child Allowance for Social Protection’, also project different economic returns for the son's future. The decisions they make contradict the ultimate purpose of this policy: to accumulate human capital in the recipient through formal education. The young man's abandonment of secondary school and his entry into the informal labour market trigger different reflections on his future for mother and son. Despite the fact that both project future returns for investing the money, the mother, acting as administrator of the programme, reproduces state-driven processes of capital deprivation at the expense of her son's human capital.