Fathers' reports of within-household vaccine decision making and young children's COVID-19 vaccination status

Understanding how parents make decisions about child vaccination is important to guide interventions to increase child vaccination rates. However, few studies have examined parent vaccine decision making within households and no studies have examined this question from the perspective of fathers. In a sample of 943 fathers, from the Fathers & Families cohort and living in two-parent (father-mother) households, this study examines parents' decision making and agreement about their child receiving, or not receiving, the COVID-19 vaccine, and links with children's vaccination status. The association between fathers' and mothers' agreement about whether or not to vaccinate child against COVID-19 and child COVID-19 vaccination status was examined using multivariate logistic regression, adjusting for parent characteristics. The vast majority of fathers (89.0%) reported that they and their child's mother jointly decided on vaccinating their child and typically agreed on whether or not to vaccinate their child against COVID-19. Multivariate logistic analysis showed that children whose parents agreed on whether or not to vaccinate them were 14.8 times (B = 2.70, 95% CI: 7.1–31.2) more likely to have received the COVID-19 vaccine than those whose parents disagreed or had not discussed vaccination. The findings highlight a new avenue for outreach efforts aimed at promoting child vaccination rates through understanding fathers' specific concerns about child vaccines and communication with fathers and mothers about child vaccination.