WIC Matters

When I got pregnant with my son in 1994, I received WIC benefits. Women, Infants and Children is an income-based nutrition program that provides a confusing, but much appreciated, strict allotment of food to low-income mothers, of which I was one. At a very uncertain and frightening time, WIC was there. The assistance offered was just enough to allow me to remain employed, continue my education, and still provide for my son.

I had a bachelors degree, so I was neither uneducated, nor stupid. The current narrative that a person receiving benefits must be ignorant and uneducated was not the case for me, and is not true for many folks receiving public assistance today.

My son’s father, a staunch Southern Baptist, would have married me, but I suspect he thanks his God every day that I declined. It would not have ended well, despite him being a perfectly nice and well-meaning human.

I was also gainfully employed as a library assistant at a for-profit college for around $9.50 an hour. A hefty $2.25 above today’s federal minimum wage of $7.25. Wages haven’t changed much since 1994 and I challenge each of you to imagine a budget based on the minimum wage.

The college where I worked offered tuition reimbursement and I had applied, been accepted to, and was enrolled in Library School. Again, I was not stupid, uneducated, nor a slacker. And I was doing all the things we’ve been told to do in order to be successful. Nothing was working the way my middle-class upbringing had promised.

I owned my own home. And my poverty was not a case of having bought more house than I could afford. I had paid $22,000 for a very, very modest home. My mortgage payment was $250 and my unairconditioned car was paid for. I was not mismanaging the little money I was making.

Before I got pregnant, I was living paycheck to paycheck. I had done, and was continuing to do, everything I was supposed to do to be successful. Yet I was barely making it.

I puked my way through the first semester of graduate school, and soaked the front of my sweatshirt during cataloging class when my milk came in the second. I was neither lazy, nor afraid to work through adversity.

Despite my education, despite gainful employment, my drive to succeed, and my status as a homeowner, I was struggling to merely exist. There was no wiggle room. When my car irreparably broke down I had to borrow money from a relative. What do people with no family, or family without the means to help, do?

I will never forget the stomach-churning day a pay-raise tipped me over the WIC income limit, making us ineligible. It should have been joyous, but I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to provide for my child. Spoiler alert . . . we’re fine. But that raise created a conflict between wanting to succeed professionally and wanting to be fully present for my child. I became caught in the gap between receiving assistance and actually making enough money to be self-sufficient. It took me five years to get through a two year graduate program while working full-time and raising my son. It is no surprise that many choose to postpone careers and don’t pursue promotions when premature denial of assistance makes doing so nearly impossible.This is a serious problem in a program that is meant to give people the stability they need to get those raises and promotions.

To be clear, I was eligible for WIC many months before my son was born. With my full-time job, I was still eligible for government assistance. My son became the greatest motivator of my life and the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m not sure I would have persevered had he not come along to raise the stakes.

I telling you this after all these years, because our current White House administration is planning further cuts to a program that helped me just enough to save me from the poverty that threatened to consume me and helped transform me into a tax-paying citizen of over twenty years. “(FNS-2018-0004) would make it harder for people struggling to find steady work to access the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Through harsh time limits and burdensome reporting requirements, the Administration is attempting to deprive 755,000 people of the means to feed themselves and their families.”*

I get that you may have never personally needed assistance. You may have never filed bankruptcy, or received Unemployment or Disability benefits, WIC or SNAP. It doesn’t mean that someday you won’t, and I guarantee I’m not the only one you know and love who has. In sharing my story, I’m hoping you’ll share yours, and then do something to protect the programs that protect us all. Do something. Let’s do it together.