A New Zealand study has found that fathers/partners influence family decisions about child health. They looked at the decision to immunize a child among 6000 mothers and 4000 fathers.

During pregnancy, most future parents intend to immunize their child fully – 81% of mothers and 71% of fathers/partners. More partners than mothers remain undecided about immunisation: 22% of fathers/partners compared to 13% of mothers in this study.

Timely immunisation occurred in 70% of infants. Once the future mother’s intentions were controlled for, babies of fathers/partners who had decided upon full immunizations were more likely to be immunised on time.

Grant CC, Chen MH, Bandara DK, Marks EJ, Gilchrist CA, Lewycka S, Carr PE, Robinson EM, Pryor JE, Camargo CA & Morton SM (2016), Antenatal immunisation intentions of expectant parents: Relationship to immunisation timeliness during infancy, PubMed

Photo: Alex Proimos. Creative Commons.