Teenagers keep all sorts of secrets from their parents. Drinking. Sex. Lousy grades. But the secret that Elizabeth, 17, a rising high-school senior from New York City, keeps from hers is new to the buffet of adolescent misdeeds. She doesnt want her parents to know that she is vaccinated against Covid-19.
Her divorced parents have equal say over her health care. Although her mother strongly favors the vaccine, her father angrily opposes it and has threatened to sue her mother if Elizabeth gets the shot. Elizabeth is keeping her secret not only from her father, but also her mother, so her mom can have plausible deniability. (Elizabeth asked to be identified only by her middle name.) The vaccination of children is crucial to achieving broad immunity to the coronavirus and returning to normal school and work routines. But though Covid vaccines have been authorized for children as young as 12, many parents, worried about side effects and frightened by the newness of the shots, have held off from permitting their children to get them.
A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only three in 10 parents of children between the ages of 12 through 17 intended to allow them to be vaccinated immediately. Many say they will wait for long-term safety data or the prod of a school mandate. But with many teenagers eager to get shots that they see as unlocking freedoms denied during the pandemic, tensions are crackling in homes in which parents are holding to a hard no.
Forty states require parental consent for vaccination of minors under 18, and Nebraska sets the age at 19. (Some states carve out exemptions for teenagers who are homeless or emancipated.) Now, because of the Covid crisis, some states and cities are seeking to relax medical consent rules, emulating statutes that permit minors to obtain the HPV vaccine, which prevents some cancers caused by a sexually transmitted virus. Last fall, the District of Columbia Council voted to allow children as young as 11 to get recommended vaccines without parental consent. The New Jersey and New York legislatures have bills pending that would allow children as young as 14 to consent to vaccines; Minnesota has one that would permit some children as young as 12 to consent to Covid shots.
But other states are marching in the opposite direction. Although South Carolina teenagers can consent at 16, and doctors may perform certain medically necessary procedures without parental permission on even younger children, a bill in the Legislature would explicitly bar providers from giving the Covid shot without parental consent to minors. In Oregon, where the age of medical consent is 15, Linn County ordered county-run clinics to obtain parental consent for the Covid shot for anyone under 18. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which has been tracking Covid-related bills, some states, including Tennessee and Alabama, are working on legislation to prevent public schools from requiring Covid shots.
The issue of who can consent to the Covid shots is providing fresh context for decades-old legal, ethical and medical questions. When parents disagree, who is the arbiter? At what age are children capable of making their own health decisions and how should that be determined?
Isabella wants it because her friends are getting it, and she doesnt want to wear a mask, said Charisse, a mother of a 17-year-old in Delray Beach, Fla., who asked that her last name be withheld for family privacy. Charisse fears the shot could have an effect on her daughters reproductive system (a misperception that public health officials have repeatedly refuted).
Isabella said, Its my body. And I said, Well, its my body until youre 18.
As both the legal debates and family arguments unfold, those administering the vaccine at pharmacies, clinics and medical offices are trying to determine how to proceed when a young teen shows up for the Covid shot without a parent.
We may be in a legal gray zone with this vaccine, said Dr. Sterling Ransone Jr., a family physician in Deltaville, Va. In his health system, a parent can send a signed consent form for a teenager to be vaccinated. But because the Covid vaccine is authorized only for emergency use, the health system requires a parent to be present for a patient under 18 to get that shot.
Marina, 15, who lives in Palm Beach County, Fla., and who, like others interviewed, asked not to be fully identified longs for the shot. But her mother says absolutely not. The subject is not open for discussion.
And so Marina has been excluded from the social life she covets. Five of my friends are throwing a party and they invited me, but then they said, Are you vaccinated? she said. So I cant go. That hurts.
As the pandemic ebbs, some teen social circles are reconstituting based on vaccination status. I see my friends posting on social media Woo-Hoo I got it! and now when I see them, they ask me things like, Where have you been? Are you traveling a lot? Are you sure you dont have Covid? It sucks that I cant get the shot, Marina continued.
Increasingly, frustrated teenagers are searching for ways to be vaccinated without their parents consent. Some have found their way to VaxTeen.org, a vaccine information site run by Kelly Danielpour, a Los Angeles teenager.
The site offers guides to state consent laws, links to clinics, resources on straightforward information about Covid-19 and advice for how teenagers can engage parents. Someone will ask me, I need to be able to consent at a vaccine clinic that is open on weekends and that is on my bus route. Can you help? said Ms. Danielpour, 18, who will begin her freshman year at Stanford in the fall.
She started the site two years ago, well before Covid. The daughter of a pediatric neurosurgeon and an intellectual property lawyer, she realized that most adolescents know neither the recommended vaccine schedule nor their rights.
We automatically talk about parents but not about teens as having opinions on this issue, she said. I decided I needed to help. Ms. Danielpour wrangled experts to help her understand vaccination and consent laws, and she recruited teenagers to be VaxTeen ambassadors.
I want teenagers to be able to say to pediatricians, Hey, I have this right, added Ms. Danielpour, who gives talks at conferences to physicians and health department officials.
Elizabeth surreptitiously got her vaccine at a school pop-up clinic.
After administrators at her boarding school informed parents they would be offering Covid shots, her mother gave permission. Her father forbade it. Upset, Elizabeth consulted the school nurse, who said she could not be vaccinated without approval from both. Elizabeth researched state laws, learning that she wasnt old enough to consent on her own. She showed up anyway. At worst, she figured, the school would just turn her away. Apparently, they took note only of her mothers consent. Saying nothing, Elizabeth stuck out her arm.
Now she is in a pickle. The school is requiring students to be vaccinated for the fall semester and she says her father has begun warring with the administration over the issue. Elizabeth is afraid that if he learns how she was vaccinated, he will be furious and tell the school, which will discipline her for having deceived vaccinators, a stain on her record just as she is applying to college.
And so Marina has been excluded from the social life she covets. Five of my friends are throwing a party and they invited me, but then they said, Are you vaccinated? she said. So I cant go. That hurts.
So ridiculous. I know many people whose parents (boomers) refuse to get the shot and theyre in a constant state of stress worrying about their parents. Im very thankful that my parents got the vaccine.
I understand the sentiment. My parents hopped on the antivaxx train, and are still sending me that horseshit and bring it up unprompted. I got the vaccine back in March but haven't told them yet.
Actually, that's not entirely true. I told my mom the day before, and she melted down, trying to call me, sent me paragraphs about how I shouldn't get it, and telling my sister and dad so they can send me the same shit. The only thing I could think of to bring down the situation was to say that I was joking. ---