Canada has become the first country to approve emergency use authorization for the Pfizer vaccine for kids 12 and over. The FDA will likely do the same for the U.S. at the beginning of next week. Moderna is working on its own version for teens. And once the doors are open to this younger group of kids, the question becomes, how will parents act? Matthew Simonson, a doctoral student at Northeastern University, a researcher with The COVID States Project and the lead author of a new report "Vaccinating America's Youth" joined Morning Edition to discuss a new study that looked at parents and their willingness to vaccinate their children. The following transcript has been edited for clarity.
Mathieu: What did you find about the decider, in this case, the parents who would have to bring their kids to get a shot?
Simonson: We see a striking difference between mothers and fathers. And this has been consistent over time. Fathers have become slightly less resistant to getting vaccinated. There are about 11% of fathers who say "no way," they're extremely unlikely to get their kids vaccinated. And with mothers, it is several times this amount.
And we see this particularly pronounced with young mothers. Mothers who are under the age of 35 — over a third of them say that they are very unlikely to get their children vaccinated, whereas for fathers of any age, it hovers between 10% and 14%. So there's a big gap between mothers and fathers, and a big gap between young mothers and older mothers.
Mathieu: Do we have a sense of how many folks were anti-vaccine to begin with, or is this specific to the COVID vaccine?
Simonson: We know from nationwide vaccination rates in the past that, although a lot of people say that they have some hesitancy or some skepticism about vaccination, in the end non-vaccination ends up being [around] 1% or 2% of America's children. In the end, nearly all kindergartners end up getting their shots. And part of that is because the schools require vaccination in most states and most places in order to attend. So there definitely seems to be more resistance to this new vaccine than there is to existing childhood vaccination schedules.
Mathieu: A majority of the states are back in the classroom. Matthew, do we know how parents feel about school vaccination requirements?
Simonson: Yes. Again, we see quite a gender gap between mothers and fathers and between men and women in the general population. On the whole, a slight majority of Americans are supportive of school vaccination requirements. In February, 54% of Americans said they supported requiring children to get vaccinated before returning to school in person. And that's risen to 58%. So it's not a lot, but it is a statistically significant increase.
And what's interesting here is that while mothers are less likely than other women to support requiring vaccinations to go to school, fathers are more supportive than other men. So not only do we see a gender gap among parents, among adults, but being a parent has different effects for men and for women.
Mathieu: You found that parents of teenagers were a bit more warm to the idea than parents who have young ones.
Simonson: That's correct — both in terms of willingness to vaccinate their kids and support for requiring vaccination to return to school, there is slightly more support among parents of teenagers than parents of zero- to five-year-olds. And on top of that, support is growing more among parents of teenagers, but it's still much lower than we would hope in terms of getting our entire population vaccinated.
Mathieu: What's the takeaway here, Matthew? What do you think will happen with vaccination rates for people 16 and younger?
Simonson: I do have hope that by gradually expanding the pool of people who are vaccinated to include groups that parents are more skeptical about, that will build support over time. The key, I believe, to building support for vaccinations is through social networks. It's one thing to have someone on TV telling you that it's safe, but if your neighbor tells you it's safe, if someone in your parent group or someone at your school says, "Oh, my child got it, my child was fine," that can really have a persuasive effect on parents.
WATCH: Matthew Simonson on vaccinating younger people
