In Defense of WIC

I did some WIC bashing yesterday. And some of the commenters at Megan’s blog were dissing a program that provided food supplements to grad students. I thought I would say some good things about WIC.

We received WIC at a very tough time in our lives. We were rushing to finish the dissertations. We had a baby. I was recovering from a rather severe slip of the knife during my C-section — my bladder had been sliced open during the operation. I didn’t have a paid job and Steve was just making $2,500 adjuncting a class at a community college. My parents had lent us money to survive the year.

We needed WIC to pay for formula. The food supplements helped out, but we mostly needed help paying for the formula. Formula costs about $100 a month and we didn’t have that money at that time.

Taking that time to finish our dissertations was very important. We finished the dissertations, because we took that time off. I don’t think we would have finished without the help from my parents and WIC. As a result, I now have a good job and Steve has a job that pays very well. His job appreciated that he has a PhD and has promoted him to a management position usually held by someone with a JD. We certainly pay more in taxes than we ever received from WIC. Our quality of life is much better and our take home salaries are much higher than if we given up on our education when the baby came.

There is certainly some insanity in their regulations regarding food purchases, but, overall, it is an excellent program. It doesn’t penalize children for their parent’s educational or employment choices. It provided us with a hand when we need it and enabled us to finish our education. We always had milk and cheese on the table.  Kinks certainly need to be worked out, but the program is certainly worthwhile.