The Shame Thing

A coworker: They’ve just given people too much free money with these stimulus checks and now no one wants to work.

A family member: People shouldn’t have kids they can’t afford.

Someone behind me in line, seeing my EBT card as I’m paying for groceries: Well that must be nice.

Commenter on the TikTok of a woman who treated herself to a $4.75 drink at Starbucks: Food stamps is for necessities. If she has extra for indulgences, she’s getting too much.

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I didn’t write very much last year. Some of that was the dawning realization that we have not one, but two kids on the spectrum. We’ve been going through the process of getting my daughter assessed, not only with a doctor, for which there’s a huge wait in Washington, but also with the school system so that she can attend developmental preschool. In the middle of her assessment process, we realized that our son should be attending as well, which means double the Zoom meetings, double the assessment visits, double the paperwork. I’m psyched for them to start school, assuming the Covid cases level out, but getting them there has felt like a part-time job.

Then there’s my actual job. And my graduate program, which is heavy on research papers and assigned reading that I have to tackle once the kids fall asleep. And then there’s the pandemic. And my mental health. And just…being a person. So there are some personal reasons I haven’t written as much as I wanted. But there are some external ones, too.

Rachel Cohen @rmc031

"Publicly, his biggest gripes are about the cost of the bill. But privately, Manchin has told his colleagues that he essentially doesn’t trust low-income people to spend government money wisely."

huffpost.comJoe Manchin Privately Told Colleagues Parents Use Child Tax Credit Money On DrugsThe West Virginia senator just killed Democrats’ agenda. In private negotiations, he questioned whether the poorest Americans would spend financial aid wisely.

It seems like everyone has an opinion about “poor people” lately. I put that in quotation marks because it feels like the definition of who is poor shifts depending on which social program people are angry about. Joe Manchin doesn’t feel that low-income families will spend the child tax credit wisely, but that covers a wide income range, including families with an annual salary of $200,000 per parent.

It’s hard to put into words how stressful this is, this discussion of our theoretical finances in the zeitgeist. Because by any definition, we are the “poor people” they’re talking about. Our kids are on Medicaid. We started getting basic food assistance this year in addition to our usual WIC package. We got the full child care tax credit for each of our children plus retroactive P-EBT benefits.

I have been taught two things about government assistance in America, not just this year but all the years before it: One, to deserve help, you must be visibly suffering. (I still think about a Fox News report from years ago that essentially boiled down to, “Poor people have televisions and air conditioning!”) Two, no matter what level of help you receive, you should feel indebted. Like life debt indebted. Like fantasy character on a quest indebted.

I think this is why the more assistance we have access to, the more my shame about money grows. Even though I think we’re spending it well. Even though our number one vice, restaurant spending, has been almost curbed to zero. Even though we only spent one of our child tax credits and saved the rest. (November’s payment went to Christmas presents.) Even though I’m going to graduate in a semester and look for a higher paying job, which is what good “poor people” are supposed to put their energy into doing.

I still hide my EBT card under my debit card at the grocery store checkout. I move the terminal so the cashier can’t see me swipe it when I’m able to. Because sometimes they see the card and get noticeably colder and I walk to the car wondering if I could have prevented that. What did I do wrong? Was there was something in my cart—soda? gum? cookies? heat and eat meatloaf?—that caused their reaction? It’s difficult to write about money, even anonymously, when you can feel strangers judging your decisions on every level. But this year I’m going to do just that.