What I learned from parents who don't vaccinate their kids | Jennifer Reich | TEDxMileHigh

Transcriber: Eunice Tan Reviewer: Tanya Cushman So I gave birth to my second child about a year after 9/11, when our fear of terrorism was the greatest it had ever been. It was the first year of the so-called "war on terrorism" and we had a completely new Department of Homeland Security. In one particularly panicky moment, we were all advised to go out and buy duct tape and plastic sheeting so we could seal our doors and windows in the event of a bioterrorist attack. We were told to be prepared at all times, that the air could become poisonous and that infectious diseases could be used as a weapon against unsuspecting communities.

The last stocks of smallpox in a handful of laboratories around the world seemed an obvious choice. And so first responders, including my husband, Dave, and my friends from my health policy fellowship, were asked to get

vaccinate

d against a disease that was eradicated in 1969. At the same time, as the mother of a newborn and a three-year-old, When I was a year old, I was online reading advice from other mothers: how to find child care, how to make breastfeeding easier, how to get your baby to sleep. But among all the usual maternal advice, there was an unusual trend: Mothers suggested that vaccines against childhood diseases are not actually needed and that, in fact, they could be dangerous.

So here I was, on the one hand, watching mothers say that vaccines against known diseases like whooping cough and measles aren't really needed, and on the other hand, as health care providers I knew debated getting

vaccinate

d against a hypothetical risk. . And while I was trying to make sense of it all, Dave was coming home from the children's hospital where he worked and telling me stories about children with vaccine-preventable diseases: babies on ventilators with whooping cough, a child paralyzed by tetanus. These contradictions seemed difficult to understand. And so, as a sociologist, I set out to study this as I would any other project, to try to understand why

parents

were rejecting vaccines despite evidence that they have helped keep generations of children healthy.

I set out to interview the

parents

, who turned out to be mostly mothers because women make most healthcare decisions for

their

families. We talked about

their

fear of vaccines and the harm they feared they might cause. They told me about their distrust of pharmaceutical companies and the government agencies that are supposed to monitor them. Some told me that the infection is actually normal and natural and that the body can heal itself as long as it is healthy. But all the way, mothers told me how hard they're working: making baby food from scratch, dying Halloween cookies with crushed grits and beets to avoid artificial dyes, growing organic food in their backyards.

These mothers were working hard to do

what

they thought was best for their own children, and that included avoiding vaccines. Now, it's easy to dismiss these mothers as ignorant, selfish, or delusional, to say that they simply don't understand how serious vaccine-preventable diseases can be, or to label them as anti-science. And if you're like most Americans, you already have firsthand experience with these conversations on Facebook, at particularly contentious Thanksgiving dinners (Laughter), hopefully not, but maybe on your

kids

' playgrounds. . And while I don't agree with their claims and have fully vaccinated all three of my children,

what

I have come to understand in the course of my research is that parents who refuse some or all vaccines are actually responding in quite logical ways to the pressures. that is imposed on parents today, and that this movement is actually a symptom of a much larger problem.

So let me explain to you. Think about what we tell women from the moment they are pregnant (sometimes even before conception) and throughout their children's lives about what it means to be a good parent. From birth plans to nutrition, choosing a school and entering college, we mothers are told that our children's successes or failures depend on our hard work. We can see this individualistic parenting culture in the way we blame mothers for anything that goes wrong with their children. Is your child sick, getting bad grades, misbehaving? It's probably your fault. And when you can't make perfect decisions, someone will let you know because others are watching you. (Laughs) When I was pregnant, other women stopped me, not once, but twice, while ordering coffee and they wanted to make sure I ordered decaf. (Laughter) And we know that for low-income mothers of color, the pressures are much, much worse, resulting not only in stupid questions, but sometimes in reports to social services or law enforcement agencies.

But we don't just examine mothers. We also don't believe there are enough resources for everyone's children to succeed: there aren't enough rooms at a good school, there aren't enough spots on the travel soccer team, there aren't enough jobs after college. And so we pit parents against each other, competing for what seems like a small pool of resources, trying to do what's best for their own children. From this point of view, the recent college admissions scandal begins to make sense. They paid a high price to try to ensure that their children could succeed in a world where there doesn't seem to be enough to go around.

But our problem is not just individualistic parenting; It's also what we tell each other about what it means to be healthy. Public health agencies, doctors, websites, blogs, magazines, apps, your watch, your friends, and even your family will tell you that health is a personal project. It's your job to stay healthy. Count your calories, count your steps, eat less fat, eat less sugar, drink more water. I don't remember what we are supposed to do with carbs, but rather something with carbs. (Laughter) When we hear that someone we know is sick, we almost always wonder what they did or didn't do to cause that illness.

And the truth is that most diseases escape individual control. Some of this is genetic, much of it is environmental, and some of it is just bad luck. But we don't act that way. We act as if if you made all the right decisions you could stay healthy. If we put these two trends together - one that says it's your personal choices as a parent that determine whether your child is successful and another that says it's your personal choices that determine health or illness - it's actually not that surprising that An increasing number of parents see vaccines as a personal choice and part of a broader strategy for their own families.

But our personal decisions affect others significantly. Vaccines work best when everyone uses them. Yes, there is almost always a personal benefit to the person who contracts it, but its true power lies in reducing the risk of infection for everyone in the community. So let's take something like rubella, the most forgettable component of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine: the MMR vaccine. Rubella is a fairly mild disease for virtually everyone who suffers from it. But it was a leading cause of birth defects when pregnant women became infected. That's why we vaccinate young children against rubella not because they personally benefit the most, but because they are most likely to be around pregnant women who most need protection.

Our best public health interventions and social programs come from the belief that we can do more together than alone. Free public education, sanitation, national parks, and even fire stations are examples of things we collectively fund and support, but may not use or benefit equally. And the same goes for vaccines, but we seem to have lost sight of it. Instead, pharmaceutical companies tell us that our daughter could be one less woman with cervical cancer if we use her vaccine, and public health agencies tell us that we can show our love for our own children by vaccinating them.

Vaccines are always referred to as a consumer product and not as a public good. And so, like all consumer products, it's up to you to decide if you need it, want it, or will benefit from it. More generally, we tell young families today that they should support their own children to the limit of their resources, but that they need not worry about other people's children, only their own. None of this improves our communities. This is what I meant when I said that vaccine refusal is a symptom of a much larger problem. Because this culture of individualism is a crisis and affects most of the social problems we face as a society.

Because if your child has access to clean water, do you really care if the

kids

in Flint, Michigan don't? And if your child has access to plenty of nutritious foods, does it really matter if the kids in the next town live in a food desert? And if your child can afford a charter school, do you really care if your neighborhood school is failing and can't pay its teachers a fair wage? We could solve all of these problems if parents would just stand up and say, "Neither can my child or your child." (Applause) We have to start dismantling this culture of individualistic parenting.

The first step is to stop blaming each other for everything that goes wrong (Applause), especially since there are so many things that are beyond individual control. So, when we meet the mother of a disabled child, let's not ask her or wonder what she did wrong during the pregnancy. (Applause) Just like when we meet someone with cancer or heart disease, it doesn't really matter how healthy their lifestyle is or isn't. Let's just support them anyway. (Applause) And let's find ways to help mothers who are struggling. Let's sometimes give them a friendly smile or a word of encouragement, and yes, even when their children are screaming in the supermarket or on a plane. (Applause) The most important thing is to find ways to show that we are committed to other people's children because, this is important, if we start acting like we are involved with other families, other families will become involved with ours. (Applause) Now, this won't solve the problem of declining vaccination rates overnight, but it will begin to move toward a culture of public investment in the health of others.

And then we could build communities where everyone's children and parents can thrive. Thank you. (Applause)