Parental Attitudes Toward Vaccination

Widespread vaccination of children plays a crucial part in public health efforts to stem disease, including Covid-19. However, parental decision-making about childhood vaccines must account not only for the individual risk-benefit analysis that individuals make for themselves, but also for unique concerns related to development, long-term risk, and parenting ideologies. Factors predicting parental vaccine hesitancy include demographic characteristics, low perceived susceptibility to disease, low perceived severity of disease, irregular or negative interactions with healthcare professionals, distrust in allopathic medicine, and parenting ideologies associated with hypervigilance. The novelty of the covid-19 vaccine exacerbates these factors.