"Touche" to Janet for responding to the stereotype of WIC moms!  I was a WIC
mom in graduate school when I was pregnant with Miranda (1980) and when she
was little.  I would go to WIC and sit through the nutrition education film
strips during the day, and then go to my graduate class in nutrition at the
university at night.  I remember being treated like a 'leper' at my local
grocery store, where I had shopped for five years, the day I first brought
in my WIC coupons and used them to buy Kix and orange juice and milk and
eggs and cheese.  The prejudice against "poor people" JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE
POOR was never clearer to me than those days.  I gave the first "graduation
address" to the first class of WIC peer counsellors in Bryan/College Station
and was proud (not ashamed) to say that I had once been helped by the WIC
program and was happy to participate in that occasion of the first graduates
of the program.

Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.
e-mail to [log in to unmask]
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Texas A&M University
Specialist in infant feeding and growth