Vaccine Rebels: The Teens Defying Their Parents to Get the COVID Vaccine - Teen Vogue
An 18th birthday is iconic for any teenager. They can finally vote, get piercings and tattoos without parental permission, play the lotto, book a hotel room, open a credit card, and even get married. But Heather, a 17-year-old in California, is looking forward to her birthday for a different reason: She’ll be able to get the coronavirus vaccine without needing parental consent.
In December of 2020, as the death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic reached record heights, vaccine rollout began in America. New York nurse Sandra Lindsay was the first to get the shot and now, four months later, more than 50 million Americans have followed suit with millions more scheduled every day. But not everyone is lining up to get the COVID vaccine despite the fact that more than 550,000 Americans have died from the virus and health officials are warning of a fourth wave as cases rise nationwide. A survey published in March 2021 found that, while it's decreasing, vaccine hesitancy is present in about 30% of Americans. As vaccines are becoming available to not only those who are elderly or have pre-existing conditions, but anyone age 16 and above depending on the vaccine, minor children are left to fight with their vaccine hesitant parents because in most states, you need parental consent to get the COVID vaccine if you’re under the age of 18. (Some states have exceptions to allow minors to bypass parental consent for the COVID vaccine.) Even for young people who are older than 18 years of age, the schism between themselves and their parents is only widening by their choice to get vaccinated.
Heather, who turns 18 in July, was surprised when her parents said they didn’t trust the vaccine. Usually, Heather says, she’s on the same page as her parents, so the disagreement was a shock. Her mom, who’s a nurse, said she thought the vaccine development felt rushed, which is a common fear shared by people who don't want to get the vaccine. Heather tried to counter that argument with science — the technology used to formulate a vaccine is light years ahead of where it used to be (and trials have found the vaccine to be safe), but her mother wasn’t swayed.
When Heather decided she was going to get the vaccine against her parents’ wishes, she was met with another roadblock: in her home state of California, she needed parental consent. They wanted her to wait until she was 18 in case “something did go wrong, they wouldn’t want to feel guilty or be held responsible. [They said] ‘we’ll help you afterwards but you make your decision on your own.’”
It’s frustrating to have to wait until her July birthday when Heather will be eligible through the statewide mandate starting April 15. She had been hoping to get vaccinated before the summer began and the state started reopening. But she’s glad she’ll be 18 in July and able to get vaccinated before she heads off to college in the fall. “I would like to have the option to do in-person classes again,” she said. “I would like to be on campus.”
Yesenia, who is 20-years-old, doesn’t need her parents’ permission to get the vaccine but is upset by the rift the issue has caused between her and her mother. Last year, when Yesenia’s dad fell down the rabbit hole of the QAnon conspiracy theory, her mother was her lifeline and the only parent she could count on to stay rooted in reality. But now, Yesenia watches as her mother parrots similar false conspiracies: that maybe there’s a microchip in the vaccine.
WATCH
Dear White Women, We Need To Talk About Coachella | Pop Feminist
“I was like, do you hear yourself? You sound just like my dad,” Yesenia said. “She’s like ‘I’m not like your dad. The difference between me and your dad is I’m telling the truth and his is a conspiracy theory.’”
After their first fight about the vaccine, the mother-daughter duo didn’t talk for three days. Yesenia was devastated that her mother was putting her health at risk on the basis of debunked vaccine conspiracy theories. Yesenia’s plan is to keep her own vaccination a secret from her mother, who she lives with. But she’s worried that she may have side effects like a fever or chills which will lead to her mother finding out she got vaccinated. “As long as I’m fine, I’m not going to tell her,” she said. “Maybe in a few years I’ll tell her.”
But the thing that she can’t stop thinking about isn’t whether her mom will find out when she gets vaccinated — it’s how many other millions of people have the same view of the vaccine as her mom.
Andrea Polonijo, a postdoctoral fellow who studies how social factors affect vaccination, says that young adults have to look out for themselves. “You don’t necessarily have to discuss these decisions with a parental figure if you’re looking out for your own health,” Polonijo said.
Polonijo says she’s found that it can take “multiple encounters before someone who is vaccine hesitant comes around and becomes accepting of vaccines. But for a small number of people, they’re not going to come around. And in those cases, maybe that discussion isn’t worth pursuing any further.”
Harriet, a 26-year-old in Texas, says she’s used to fighting with her parents about political issues but the vaccine feels different. “It goes beyond my perspective and worldview. I’m very concerned for [my family’s] health.”
Although Harriet’s parents took measures like social distancing and masking seriously at the start of the pandemic, they changed their minds around late summer 2020. “It changed from ‘we’re protecting ourselves’ to ‘this is an infringement on freedom and rights’.” While Harriet continued to social distance and stay home when possible, her parents told her they feared she was avoiding life, developing mental illness and letting the government manipulate her. In their latest conversation about the vaccine, Harriet’s mother cried while sharing her unfounded fear that Harriet would be infertile if she got vaccinated. With Harriet’s parents and sister firmly against the vaccine and Harriet for it (with her other sister somewhere in the middle), Harriet is outnumbered. “I try to provide alternate points of information but I don’t feel like I’m going to get through when I’m up against everything… just being me.”
When she scheduled her first vaccine appointment, Harriet was struck with guilt over the situation: if COVID hits her family, she will likely be protected and her parents won’t. She’s also nervous that her decision to get vaccinated will affect her relationship with her family.
“My mom takes it very personally, like she says ‘you’re not listening to me, you’d rather trust a stranger than me,” she said. “And I’m like ‘yeah, a stranger [who] is a doctor, I’m sorry, Mom.’”