Should WIC be PIC?

(If You Were A Father - Would You Feel Dads
Are Important To This Agency?)
Exclusion can happen in all shapes and forms. We as a society have challenged names of groups and organizations due to the changing climate of cultural competency. For example, when I was a child, names reflective of challenges to race or diversity were challenged. We had a Sambos restaurant in our town, and due to the history of the name, the restaurant changed their name due to pressures from civil rights groups.

Maybe it is time for Fathers to consider the benefit of this practice when it comes to social service providers. Social service providers and many parenting programs are advocates for moms first, then dads. Expectations are important. Would a service provider prioritize race or gender? Of course not. The law is clear. However, parenting programs are allowed to have different expectations. For examples, WIC. Women Infant and Children lacks diversity. If I were a father, I would ask, hmmmm, where is dad? It should be PIC. Parents Infant and Children. The current incarnation assigns nutritional health only to one parent based on our past that the dad was a financial provider, and not a home provider. Times have changed, and dads are just as involved in nutritional health as moms.

Here is the official definition of WIC: The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk. The program definition should be extended to fathers. Fathers have been given custody of children under 5, and by definition may not see WIC as a resource. Feeling welcomed by a service is so critical to a service being valuable to the consumers they serve.

What are your thoughts on programs designated to one parent that serve both parents and children? Should the Federal Government change the definitions to represent an inclusive environment for fathers? For this dad who wrote this article, it is time to change the name to PIC, allowing for a cultural change that benefits fathers.

One last reason to change the name. Most partnerships working with parent infant development use WIC as a referral source. Fathers are excluded from parenting partnerships due to the bias of the program's name and functionality. Systemically, this is why dads are not part of the process of parenting, because expectations of their involvement are so low. If you choose a service that has low fatherhood involvement, by proxy you are excluding dads. It is time to change the culture of programs that are resources to families, because dads matter.