Love Your Neighbor. Get Your Vaccines

How getting routine shots benefits not just you but your entire community.

A few days ago, my 4-year-old got three injections in his suntanned, still baby-dimpled arms. I read over the warnings, signed my approval, and held him as he set his little face, determined to be brave, then cried when he felt the pinch. Yesterday, my husband and I bared our own arms to get tetanus boosters and the first in a series of three hepatitis A/B vaccines.

I’m one of the moms you might expect to oppose vaccines. We try to eat local and organic, don’t watch television, homeschool our kids, and wear natural fibers. My son was born into birthing tub with a midwife present. But in November we’re also moving to Malawi, where diseases like polio, typhoid, tetanus, and cholera are not theoretical. We need those vaccines.

When I type “vaccines” into Google’s search engine, it auto-completes with “vaccines and autism,” thus summing up what more than a fifth of Americans believe, despite the fact that study after study shows no link between vaccines and autism. More and more educated, middle-class parents are choosing not to vaccinate. As the New York Times Motherlode blog recently noted:

“in one Washington State county, 72 percent of kindergartners and 89 percent of sixth graders are either not compliant with or exempt from vaccination requirements for school entry, and at a Bay Area Waldorf school . . . only 23 percent of the incoming kindergarten class had been fully vaccinated.” Read more