Why some parents are skeptical about covid vaccines for young children

On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s coronavirus vaccines for children as young as 6 months. Shots should be available next week, which will provide some parents a long overdue tool to protect their children from covid.

It also will likely go unused by most American parents. This latter group, which will likely not seek out a coronavirus vaccine for their young children, deserves closer attention, not least of all because their hesitancy represents a change in how parents make health care decisions for their children. Rather than offering generic assurances that vaccines are important, those who hope to convince them to vaccinate their children will need to meet them where they are, respond to their actual concerns, and acknowledge the uncertainties alongside the benefits of these vaccines.

More than a decade before the coronavirus pandemic, I began researching how parents decide to reject recommended vaccines for their children. Despite the common assumption that these parents are ignorant or anti-science, I found that most parents who reject some or all vaccines work hard to weigh their understanding of the risk of the disease against their understanding of the risks of the vaccines and possible benefits of vaccination. I met families who rejected all vaccines and others who consented to some and rejected others. Some even developed different vaccine strategies for each child in their family based on their view of each child’s needs and vulnerabilities.