Jennifer Reich, a sociologist at the University of Colorado, spent nearly two decades interviewing families who decline or delay childhood vaccines. Her conclusion, reported by STAT, challenges the common portrayal of these parents as selfish, ignorant, or anti-science. Instead, she argues that their choices are a logical response to cultural pressures that ask parents to be savvy, informed consumers making perfect decisions about every aspect of their children's health.
Reich found that vaccine-hesitant parents typically accept the existence of population-level data on infectious diseases, but they see little connection between those collective patterns and their own child's specific risk. They evaluate each vaccine individually, often arriving at different decisions for different children. For instance, one mother saw no benefit in a rubella vaccine for her son, since he would never become pregnant, even though rubella can devastate a pregnancy in the community around him. This reasoning, Reich notes, is not unscientific—it simply prioritizes individual benefit over communal responsibility.
Reich, whose own children received all CDC-recommended vaccines, argues that dismissing these parents as misinformed closes the door to productive dialogue. Acknowledging the logic they bring to the table, she says, could lead to better conversations about immunization. The interview comes amid a measles outbreak in Pennsylvania and ahead of Reich's appearance at the STAT Summit in October. The source is a single Q&A article, so no conflicting perspectives are presented beyond the sociologist's own observations. (Note: The article is dated Sept. 29, 2026, and is set in that context.)