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A bipartisan group of former U.S. Surgeons General recently warned the nation about the threat posed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a particularly harmful voice on vaccines. The online noise will keep swirling, but its costs land on children—the baby who can’t choose, the kid with asthma, the teen with leukemia.
I’ve spent two decades in public health and bioethics. I’m also a mom and a grandmother. Our family is vaccinated. Vaccination has more than two centuries of evidence behind it. Smallpox, polio, measles, diphtheria, tetanus: gone or drastically reduced. Modern monitoring systems continue to watch vaccine safety in real time. That’s the public-health story most people know. Here’s the psychology underneath—why smart, loving people still hesitate, and how we can help them move toward care.
Understanding vaccine-resistant parents starts with the psychology behind a person saying “no” without the facts or in spite of facts. Sometimes doing nothing feels safer. The illness a parent can’t see today feels like something that could happen way in the future—so why do anything about it now? Sometimes a parent learns of a rare side effect and obsesses over it while ignoring all the data points that show the vaccine is safe. And when some parents sense an ultimatum—do this or else—their autonomy feels at stake, and even a choice they might have made on their own becomes something to resist.
Belonging is another factor at play. For some, hesitation is a way of saying, these are my people; this is how we survive. For others, they feel they are protecting the most vulnerable from a potential negative consequence. Two moral decisions competing, both sincere, both convinced that the other has missed the point. And uncertainty—especially about a child—lands in the nervous system as a threat. Even when the numbers favor action, the unknown tilts the scale. None of this is ignorance. It’s how a nervous system, shaped by experience, keeps you alive. Trust becomes what matters most: we decide who to believe before what to believe.
If we want to help parents who are vaccine resistant, we must meet them where they are—often fearful and/or suspicious of science and the vaccine. Acknowledge a parent’s feelings first, then provide facts in plain language, and make room for questions, concerns, and doubts. Not coercion, but companionship. Clarify the risk, honor the fear, and offer a next step small enough to take.
Yes, reactions can happen. When my son was a baby, he had a strong reaction to a pertussis shot—swollen joints, rash, nonstop crying. We were scared. But we didn’t abandon his vaccine schedule. We sat with our pediatrician and built a plan: longer observation after vaccines, adjusted timing, and clear “call-if” steps. Psychologically, that plan mattered. It reduced ambiguity, restored a sense of control, and built relational trust—the three ingredients that lower anxiety and keep families engaged.
Vaccine hesitancy spikes now for reasons that are human, not hostile. Falsehoods travel quicker than corrections because they’re short, emotional, and feel true. After years of vaccine controversy, many people don’t have the bandwidth for nuance; exhaustion pulls attention toward the dramatic story that is short on fact and long on gory details. And when institutions argue in public, parents turn to the nearest circle—friends, influencers, online groups—where worry gets repeated until it sounds like truth. And beneath the noise is a quieter fear: if guidance changes, does that mean we were wrong, or worse, betrayed? Updates to vaccines may not feel like scientific progress; they may feel like inconsistency and uncertainty in the original vaccine.
None of this makes people foolish. It makes them tired, protective, and hungry for certainty. The task isn’t to scold; it’s to steady. Speak plainly. Name what’s changed in the vaccine and why. Offer a small action—let’s look at the data together. Remind people that changing course with new evidence isn’t failure—it’s progress and how we increase safety.
And we talk a lot about parental rights. Pediatrics also centers the best interest of the child. Vaccines and proven treatments meet that standard. They prevent real harm and let kids become healthy adults. That’s not ideology; it’s duty of care. In short, for most children, the benefits of vaccines outweigh the risks.
Some public figures have spent years promoting claims about vaccines that don’t hold up. Parents see the damage: outbreaks of measles and pertussis; polio detected in wastewater. Skepticism is healthy. Yet, cynicism hurts kids. The psychological move is to honor doubt without letting it harden into identity.
If you’re a hesitant parent, that doesn’t make you reckless—it makes you careful. You’re a good parent for asking hard questions. Bring that care into the visit—say, I want to protect my child and understand the real risks. Then ask for facts in a way that also makes room for feelings: What disease does this prevent? How common is it where we live? What side effects are likely and what’s truly rare? How is safety monitored over time?
It’s okay to ask for a plan that gives you some control: Given our family’s history, could we do a longer observation after the shot? Adjust the timing? Separate doses when it’s clinically reasonable? Close with clear next steps so uncertainty doesn’t do the talking later: If we notice X or Y, who do we call and how soon?
None of this is all-or-nothing. It’s care. You’re lowering the temperature enough for your nervous system to hear the science, and you’re partnering with your clinician to keep your child safe.
Vaccine policies are important to maintain the best interest of the child’s standard of care. Policy can honor people’s concerns and still protect kids. Start with clear school immunization requirements grounded in medical exemptions, or—where non-medical exemptions exist—make them rare and paired with a counseling step. The message isn’t punishment; it’s a shared norm of care. In practice and in law, use a best-interest standard that defaults to proven, harm-preventing care for children.
Give clinicians what they need to have real conversations: protected time and simple scripts that lower defensiveness and restore a parent’s sense of agency. Repair the information environment so truth travels faster—quick, plain-language corrections from trusted local voices. Invest in health literacy: parent nights, school lessons, and community classes that explain how risk works and how we watch for safety in real time.
Withholding proven, lifesaving care from children causes harm. Full stop. And yet calling parents “stupid” or “selfish” backfires; it triggers identity defense and reactance. Most hesitant parents are worried and trying to do right. However, as public health professionals, clinicians, and community leaders, we must continue to meet parents’ fears from misinformation with compassion and facts.
Our children’s lives depend on it.
