Moms Talk: Should You Vaccinate Your Kids?

Do you vaccinate your children? Why or why not?

Frugal Family columnist Rochelle Siegrist, mother of a 2-year-old son, writes:

We vaccinate on schedule and at the advice of our pediatrician. I've read the books and perused the countless vaccination debates on BabyCenter.com and found no reason to delay or not vaccinate at all. While the studies and articles published can be overwhelming, we feel we've made an informed decision for the good of our whole family, which is just about the best we can do with regards to any topic of childrearing.

Whether it’s making the decision to rear face your child's car seat beyond the recommended guidelines or co-sleep with an infant or vaccinate or not, there are always going to be those with differing opinions who are sure to tell you that you are crazy or just plain wrong, especially with regards to a topic as "hot" as this one seems to be. As long as you are obeying the law, a simple, "This works for us" suffices when anyone questions your decision. In the end, the only opinion that matters is yours.

Jenny Shepard, mom of three sons ages 6 and under, writes:

I have been a true believer in Western medicine and its advantages. I didn’t think twice about vaccinations until after my son was born and the stories from the media and friends scared me about thimerosal in vaccines and that it could be linked to autism.

Armed with as much information I could find, I went to our pediatrician, voiced my concerns and was assured that one had nothing to do with the other and that I could push the MMR shot off another six months if I chose to. I thought about the fact my then 12-month-old son had already been given every vaccine up until that point, but that MMR one scared me. It scared me enough to push it back until he was 18-months-old and was talking and socially interacting enough for me to be comfortable with my belief that he wasn’t already within the Autism spectrum.

I chose the same time frame for the MMR shot with my other two sons. I felt I was rolling the dice with three sons and the current estimate of 2 to 10 of every 10,000 people being affected, and males being four times as often to have autism over females. 

My kids are in school with other children, so my thoughts were that they need to be vaccinated to stay healthy if there are kids who haven’t been vaccinated and catch something. We all get the flu shot each year, and sometimes we escape the flu and sometimes we don’t. I don’t really mess around with this issue that much because I believe that the current vaccine schedule works. But I’d love to hear from someone who couldn’t disagree more and why.

Monrovia Mom Jaime Townzen, mother of a 2 and a 4 year old, writes:

Yes, we’ve vaccinated both of our children from the very beginning. We know there are examples galore of vaccinations-gone-wrong when it comes to allergies, vaccination quality, quantities, and too many vaccinations given simultaneously. And I’ve read many articles related to whether or not autism can be linked to vaccinations. I’m no expert, but it seems like there are as many pros as there cons out there on the subject of vaccinations, so you just have to educate yourself and make the decision you can feel most comfortable with.

For our family it just made more sense to protect our children as best we can with vaccinations. We enjoy travel, as does our extended family, and Patrick’s work has had him travel to England, South America and India just since Dani was born four years ago. We make annual visits to Baja California, and live in one of the most congested metros in the world, full of foreign travelers. I consider our exposure to be significant enough to warrant the need.

Even if a particular vaccination may seem unnecessary for modern Americans, at any given moment an outbreak can occur thanks to how relatively affordable and convenient foreign travel is these days. We’d rather not take the chance with our girls’ health.