My kid deserved what we couldn't afford

SEVEN YEARS OUT FROM NEEDING to use food stamps, and it's interesting what still triggers that feeling of humiliation that consumed my life back then. Yet I always feel it when I use a self-checkout station at the grocery store.

- STEPHANIE LAND

As a college student who earned money by cleaning people's homes, I used an EBT card, the debit card supplied to spend funds granted through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), to buy food I couldn't afford otherwise. Often my cart held our usual essentials like butter, pancake mix, and eggs, but on the days I added candy, cupcakes, or cookies, I hoped no one witnessed me using the card. I'd seen the posts on social media about what people bought with their SNAP funds. Somehow it was wrong for me to buy treats for my daughter's Christmas stocking.

This sentiment - that a child whose family relies on government assistance should be denied something that other kids feel entitled to goes beyond the "poor people can't have nice things" outcry. When people projected anger toward struggling parents like me for purchasing Christmas or Easter candy with food stamps by complaining about it online, it felt like an attempt to punish or shame me, a poor person, for getting pregnant in the first place.