<And you don't have to be POOR to be on WIC. It is for families with LOW
INCOME. You can make about 180% of poverty level for your family size to
qualify for WIC, if my memory serves me. >
160%,in NY at least. Which, interstingly enough means that, at least in our
local agency, any WIC staff mamber (except maybe the director - can't
remember about her salary level, though it certainly wasn't a lordly sum),
even working full-time, was WIC eligible if she has young child(ren) under
the age of 5. This was often the case even if she had a husband working as
well, if he didn't make big bucks. Including Masters' Degree level
nutritionists (in fact, we had a PhD nut. who was eligible!). Including an
RN IBCLC, if her kids had been young enough! As an RN working full-time at
the hospital, I qualified for WIC when my children were young enough and I
was separated from my then-husband. In Ithaca, we have grad students in all
fields on the program, as well as many staff-level employees of Cornell, and
teachers in the public school system. Lots of civil-service employees. The
wife & kids of a chiropractor. A dentist(!). Public Health nurses. Lots of
dairy farmers. Auto mechanics by the dozens. Owners of small businesses.
Burger-flippers (hundreds of 'em!), waitresses. Which says more about the
pay scale in this not-booming area than about overly-generous WIC income
guidelines. Regular, hard-working people are on WIC.
Also, you find what is more commonly thought of when you think of people on
"public assistance"-type programs: seasonal workers, teenagers still too
young to work, the mentally ill, the disabled, unemployed folks, petty
crooks, plain old-fashioned deadbeats, wives & children of incarcerated
men/boys, and strange souls who seem to do nothing. Drug dealers.
Prostitutes. Homeless people. Babies of drug addicts. Kids who've been
tossed around from relative to relative to foster families and back again -
and mothers who have grown up the same way.
NO ONE ever said here that "ALL WIC participants are poor". (shouting a
bit - sorry) No one has said that WIC participants are stupid, or bad
mothers, or ignorant, or wishing for anything best than the best for their
kids. No one has said that they are deliberately malnourishing their kids,
out of ignorance or lack of caring or anything else.
It is, however, the case that in a program where participants are by
definition low income, there are a certain number that are at the bottom of
the heap in terms of education, income, and positive opportunities in life.
Their children have been determined to be "at risk" nutritionally, or they
wouldn't be eligible for the program. Granted, sometimes that risk factor is
bogus - like the nutritionist's kids, for example. You're more likely to
find these at-risk kids among this group of people than, for example,among
the upper-income demographic segment. THIS IS NOT SAYING THAT ALL LOW-INCOME
MOTHERS DON'T KNOW HOW TO FEED THEIR BABIES!! Or that all higher income
women DO know how to!! Nor is it saying that those who need education in
this area are stupid, lazy, or poorly-intentioned.
When middle- or upper-class women give their babies bottles of pepsi or iced
tea or whatever, they generally do so *despite* knowing that it's not the
best thing for their babies - they know that it's not "ideal"; more likely,
they're figuring, "well, just once in a while it won't hurt him to drink a
coke, and I know he gets all the right stuff most of the time, and here we
are, all hot & sweaty, and this stuff is right here and I'd sure like some,
how much harm could it do?" And, within the context of an overall OK diet,
and ready accessibility of nutritious food, they're probably "right". Or at
least not likely to be seriously jeopardizing their baby's health,in the
bigger picture.It's when these foods are given day after day, because
they're cheap or readily available or what the parents habitually eat/drink,
or when bottles of root beer are crowding out more "useful" foods (yes,
including formula!), that it becomes a problem.
And YES, there are lots of people on WIC who really just don't know that,
for a real-life example, a 2-wk. old baby is not supposed to "sit up at the
table" and eat chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy. The 14-yr. old girl
who was boasting that her baby was doing this had been told by HER mother
that this was a great thing, that it somehow meant her child was extra-smart
and precocious. Ever seen this among well-educated, well-off women? I
haven't, although I've seen them give their babies strange things to
eat/drink (including formula!); the difference is that they *choose* to do
it despite having information that would recommend otherwise, as opposed to
those who don't know or who *perceive* that they have no choice.
Cathy Bargar, RN, IBCLC Ithaca NY
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