Bridging the Divide: Insights into Australian Parents’ Vaccine Decision Making

Abstract

This paper reflects on the polarised landscape of vaccine decision making among Australian parents, examining how parents think and make decisions about vaccinating their children and how they rationalise their varied vaccine stances. My interviews with six Australian parents, conducted during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, found surprising similarities in decision making between parents of varied vaccine stances. This finding challenges the ideological division between ‘pro-vax’ and ‘anti-vax’ groups, as well as the construction of anti-vax or vaccine hesitant parents as the difficult, irredeemable ‘other’. In doing so, this article aims to provide a potential starting point for how we can move toward a productive discourse around vaccine decision making, following the polarising effects of the pandemic. Through highlighting mothers’ use of embodied knowledge, I also aim to expand the conception of what we consider important in making a vaccination decision beyond the purely rational and biomedical.