That’s it! We survived two weeks of posts on vaccinations and nobody threw a public fit. I consider this success, at least relationally. Thanks to everybody who read and offered feedback for being gracious. And thanks to those of you who have had heated conversations with your computer screen, but have remembered that this topic shouldn’t separate us from each other. I love you, too.
To wrap things up, I just wanted to touch on what I’ve personally learned the most through this series. I’ve been learning that the choices I make for my kids and for myself have ramifications far outside my home. I want to be honest and say that for the last couple years I haven’t gotten the flu shot. I got it once during our houseparenting days because it was expected of us as part of our job. A nurse actually came to our campus and administered the shot to all the staff. She came to our house, I rolled up my sleeve, got the shot, and kept teaching third grade reading with my little student. I did it, but I wouldn’t exactly have called it an informed choice.
Now each year my pediatrician hassles me a bit about getting the flu shot for my kids. I put her off saying something about how my kids are pretty tough and they aren’t in childcare so I limit their exposure blah blah blah. And the last two years we’ve gotten the flu. It’s a pretty miserable week or two as it cycles through the six of us. My husband misses work, Josh misses school, and the rest of us just miss not being feverish and grumpy. This year it also ended in a sinus infection for one kid and an ear infection for the other.
It’s a nuisance, but nothing serious. This way of thinking keeps me feeling confident about my decision to avoid the flu shot. This kind of thinking also spreads to how I can feel about other vaccinations- chicken pox? We lived through it. Measles? Our parents got it and they’re all fine. Polio? Doesn’t exist anymore.
History is written by the winners.
This year my mom had to leave my baby boy’s first birthday party to attend a funeral. This was the funeral for her friend’s husband who had died from the flu. The weekend before his death he’d been helping his son move after graduating college. No one would have expected this outcome just a few days later.
My nephew is a rough and tumble six year-old, but he was born a vulnerable preemie. His lungs still carry those scars and each cold and flu season we hold our breaths to see how he’ll do. Will it be another emergency room visit for pneumonia? Will it be another hospitalization for RSV?
In both of these situations I have felt sad or concerned, but never considered that my vaccination decision in the pediatrician’s office might play a part in the life of somebody outside my home. Yes, my kids are tough. They are healthy and as a stay-at-home mom it really isn’t the end of the world if they need to be home to ride out a sickness. But if I made a different decision—if WE made a different decision—and chose to vaccinate ourselves, is it possible we could make a difference in the health of our neighbors, particularly the most vulnerable ones? Is that worth the risk of getting that flu shot?
Yes, we survived chicken pox, but some people didn’t come out unscathed. I remember even when I was a kid a lady in our neighborhood got chicken pox while she was pregnant and the results were tragic. People recover from measles, but we are not going to hear the story from the little child who contracted pneumonia (the complication from measles most likely to lead to death) and didn’t make it. We all look at each other and say, “We’re fine! Why do kids today need all these vaccinations?” but the people who didn’t live to reproduce and make those choices for their kids are not able to add their voice to the discussion. Sometimes the debate over vaccination feels like very much a “first world” problem when we choose to believe diseases that plague other countries could never reappear here based on our own experience of relative good health.
Let me talk to my Christian sisters who are struggling with this issue for a minute here. I know you bristle when somebody says “it takes a village to raise a child”. We want to do what’s best for our individual kids because we feel that weight of stewardship over their lives. We feel that each parent is responsible for their own child and we get a little touchy if somebody implies something different. The good side of this thinking is that we are very concerned and involved parents. The downside is that we may not consider the needs of the kids in our community because they are not our responsibility. We can couch it in Christian terms, but I think sometimes this is less a reflection of our Jesus-centered values (considering the weak and vulnerable) and more a reflection of our Western-centered desire for independence and self-sufficiency. Our kids are healthy. We limit their exposure to people who might be infected with diseases. Problem solved. Except when you consider those babies in the church nursery too young to be vaccinated or the five year-old on your son’s soccer team who was born much too early and still struggles with lung problems if he gets sick. My kids aren’t more important to Jesus than those kids. If my decisions can help keep them safe, does that matter?
I have read things that disturb me written by women who appear to be loving Christian moms. They ask, “Why should I take the risk for someone else’s child?” They say, “Let all those uninformed parents get the vaccinations. My kids will be protected because of our good diet. . . and also because everyone else is taking the risk and getting the vaccinations.” Obviously none of us want to put our kids at risk unnecessarily, but it’s hard for me to see Jesus in a mentality that asks that others sacrifice for you and shows little concern for the people who may suffer because of our choices. There seems to be almost a “survival of the fittest” thought process that our healthy kids will be fine because of our “natural” lifestyle and choices while the weaker ones suffer the consequences. I don’t want to be too harsh, I’m just honestly feeling this deeply because this thought process is occurring to me for the first time. I am now seeing revealed some of what has been in my own heart and I’m trying to make sense of it. We may believe that vaccinations are unnatural instead of seeing that maybe God designed the body with a shortcut system scientists have been able to understand and harness to prevent these terrible diseases. Could it be that God rejoices with the development of each new vaccine as he knows the physical suffering that may be prevented? Does God guide the scientists’ hands and bless their work to help keep his people safe or do we see vaccinations only as a tool used by greedy pharmaceutical companies and doctors?
I don’t know what God is asking you to do in this situation. I love my sisters who have made different choices about this issue and it doesn’t mean we can’t have relationships or that we are fundamentally different kinds of mothers. We are all doing the best we can with the children we have and the information we have access to. I hope we all continue to pray for wisdom on what has become a very hot topic and that like iron sharpening iron, we see the value of addressing difficult topics with each other and don’t become afraid of our differences.
(Whew! Done!)
To recap:
My history with vaccination decision making
Dr. McColl’s introduction and who do we trust
A doctor’s view of vaccinating his own kids
Whooping cough and kids who require special consideration
Specific vaccines and their effectiveness
Doctor compensation and adoption issues
4 Comments
Leave a reply →