This story was originally reported by Barbara Rodriguez of The 19th. Meet Barbara and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
President Donald Trump is peddling a vision for childhood vaccines that — in addition to making children susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseases for longer than they need to be — would place an extra burden on working mothers.
The president made a series of informal recommendations in a Truth Social post on Friday that shared misleading information about vaccines. Trump suggested, without reason, that parents spread out their children’s combination vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (also known as chickenpox) to multiple shots.
He also suggested that parents wait until their children are 12 or older to take the hepatitis B vaccine that helps prevent liver disease. Children currently get their first hep B shot at birth. Trump, who has no medical background, did not explain how such a lengthy delay would protect a child’s health.
Trump’s advice — an extension of a recent news conference in which he told pregnant people to “tough it out” instead of taking acetaminophen, the pain-relief drug sold under the brand name Tylenol — immediately reeked of sexism to Jessica Calarco, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.”
Calarco’s research has examined how women are often the “family health managers” who monitor illness within a household — whether that is a partner, a child or an aging parent — and shoulder the mental load of scheduling doctor’s visits and follow-up care. They’re often the ones who look after someone who is home sick from school, and they typically handle preventative care like routine checkups and vaccinations. So more doctor appointments mean more logistics for moms.
“Intentionally or not, Trump is adding weight to this burden that women are already carrying as family health managers,” she said.
The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) combination vaccine has been in use since the early 1970s. Separate individual vaccines are not available at this time. A combination MMRV shot has been on the market for about 20 years, though a politicized vaccine panel recently voted to limit its use. Many younger children already get an individual varicella vaccine.
Combination vaccines have several benefits, including improving families’ compliance with the childhood vaccine schedule, helping ensure kids get vaccinated on time and lowering stress about getting shots. The shots also must be shown to be safe before they are approved, noted Charlotte Moser, co-director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“More visits caused by separating vaccines will mean more appointments for parents to coordinate (possibly with extra appointment fees), more needles and healthcare visits for young children, and a longer period during which children remain susceptible to these pathogens — all of this with no proven benefit,” she wrote in an email.
A call for more doctors’ visits could mean more time parents have to take off from work. The United States does not guarantee workers any paid time off whether for childbirth, illness or caring for a loved one. People who take unpaid time off to care for their families worry that they’ll be fired from a job.
Liana Cassar is the interim executive director of Family Values @ Work, an organization that advocates for paid family and medical leave and sick time off. She noted that the majority of workers do not have paid family and medical leave — a rate that goes up when it comes to lower wage workers. Many of those workers are predominantly women, especially in caregiving and frontline workplaces.
“We know already that there are challenges with scheduling appointments. We know already that there are challenges with accessing health care. We know there are challenges with transportation to health care,” she said. “So adding any complexity to what is already challenging — especially for low-income workers, especially for caregivers, especially for women who are caregivers — we know that that is just going to make it harder to access the care that’s needed.”
This all comes at a time of extreme inequality in the United States, with rising expenses for groceries, housing and utilities.
“If you are working paycheck to paycheck, even just taking one day off without pay could be enough to cut into your grocery budget, affect your ability to pay rent and affect your ability to pay your electricity bill,” said Vasu Reddy, director of state policy for workplace justice for the National Women’s Law Center, which advocates for pay equity. “This is a big deal that we’re talking about for working families, and because such a high share of caregiving responsibilities falls upon working moms, it is especially harmful to women’s ability to take care of themselves and their families.”
Trump referenced his idea of separating vaccines at the same news conference where federal health officials announced they would initiate a label change for acetaminophen to suggest that using it while pregnant may be associated with an increased risk of neurological conditions such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children. Medical groups, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have noted that the highest-quality studies on this subject have found no significant associations between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and a children’s risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disability.
Even the Food and Drug Administration, whose commissioner stood alongside Trump at the news conference, sent a letter to physicians noting that “a causal relationship has not been established” between acetaminophen and autism, and that acetaminophen “is the safest over-the-counter alternative in pregnancy” among all fever and pain reducing medication.
If fever in pregnancy is left untreated, the pregnant person can increase the risk of birth defects and premature delivery.
Trump also suggested that parents avoid giving their kids Tylenol, which is particularly striking to Calarco since fevers are among the most common side effects of vaccines. Additional shots could force parents, especially mothers, to take more time off from work to manage a temperature.
Calarco’s book has a chapter on the “supermom myth” that examines the Satanic Panic around child care in the 1980s and ‘90s. This was picked up by conservatives, some of whom promoted the narrative that women going back to the workforce was dangerous for children.
Calarco sees parallels with how the Trump administration, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is sharing misleading information about acetaminophen and vaccines. Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, has said his department would investigate the topic — even though extensive research shows that vaccines do not cause autism. (There is no single known cause of autism, and rates have increased in recent years in part because of better diagnoses.)
“Trumped up fears around vaccines and trumped up fears around Tylenol are being used in very similar ways to tell women that your children are under threat, and you are the one who can keep them safe,” Calarco said. “And thereby, it is your responsibility to do everything possible — whether it’s quit a job and stay home or spend six hours a day on the internet researching what is and what isn’t safe for your children — it’s your responsibility as a mother to keep your kids safe no matter what.”
