March 7, 2023 –More than 1 / 4 of fogeys lied to highschool officials about their children's COVID-19 status or refused to comply with public health orders at the peak of the pandemic, a brand new study finds. Researchers suggested the 26% of fogeys who misrepresented their children's health status could have underreported the true number.
“If anything, 26% is probably the minimum” of fogeys who misled school officials, said Angela Fagerlin, PhD, researcher on the University of Utah School of Medicine.
In the survey, many parents said they saw it as their right as parents to make their very own decisions about their children's health, said Fagerlin, who can also be chair of the department of population health sciences on the University of Utah School of Medicine.
“It seems that many parents were concerned that their children would stay home from school,” she said. “At the same time, they were potentially exposing other children to serious illness.”
The survey asked parents whether or not they had lied or made false statements about their children on seven different COVID-19 topics, including disease and vaccination status and whether or not they followed quarantine protocols. Researchers tallied survey responses collected in December 2021 from 580 parents, whose average age was 36 and 70% of whom were women. The results were published Monday within the journal JAMA network opened.
Overall, 24% of fogeys said they lied to people their children were with once they knew or suspected the youngsters had COVID. About half of fogeys cited at the least one in every of the next reasons: parental freedom, the kid not feeling very sick, or wanting the kid's life to feel “normal.”
About 20% of fogeys said they avoided testing in the event that they thought their child had COVID, and fogeys also reported allowing their children to disregard quarantine rules to an analogous extent. More than half of fogeys who avoided testing said they were afraid that testing would hurt or feel uncomfortable.
About 4 in 10 parents who lied about their child's illness status or whether their child ought to be quarantined said they did so under the direction of a public figure, akin to a star or politician. At least 3 in 10 said they lied because they couldn't stay home from work to remain home with their child.
“We need to provide better support mechanisms, such as paid sick leave, for family illness so that when a future infectious disease outbreak occurs that matches or exceeds the magnitude of COVID-19, parents do not feel their only option is to provide false information or fail to follow public health guidelines,” says researcher Andrea Gurmankin Levy, PhD, of Middlesex Community College in Connecticut.