Parents’ Perspectives on Children and Covid-19: Insights from the 2022 Parenting in Tumultuous Times (PITT) Survey

Abstract

Despite evidence that children can contract, transmit, and become seriously ill from Covid-19 (Broadfoot 2022; CDC 2022a; ONS 2022; Ortaliza et al. 2022), and despite the effectiveness of both vaccines and high-quality face masks (Jehn et al. 2021; Howard et al. 2021; Walter et al. 2021), rates of childhood vaccination against Covid-19 remain far lower than rates of adult vaccination (CDC 2022b; NYT 2022), and many families have resisted efforts to maintain mask requirements in schools, childcare centers, and other spaces for children (Astor 2022). To help explain these patterns, we examine parents’ health decisions during the pandemic, and we consider how those decisions are related to parents’ perceptions of Covid-19, masks, and vaccines. We base these analyses on data from a novel survey conducted from mid-December 2021 through mid January 2022 (the height of the Omicron wave) with 2,009 US-based parents of children under 18 who were recruited through Qualtrics panels.