The problem with this logic is that history has a funny way of repeating itself. You don't have to look back to the days of feces-filled nineteenth-century streets for examples of outbreaks of preventable diseases. According to Arthur Allen's book, Colorado is full of vaccine resistors — a combination of libertarians and crunchy back-to-the-garden types — and has, as a result, had numerous hair-raising whooping cough epidemics, one of which was traced directly to a Waldorf School (where the educational philosophy is famously — and harmlessly — fruitcake, but the belief that vaccines weaken children's immune systems is less well-known). In Germany in the '90s, many parents stopped vaccinating, and then went on vacation to exotic locales, bringing unpleasant diseases back with them. Despite vaccine resisters' insistence that they are making a personal choice — which they strongly feel is no one else's business — their choice has potentially far-reaching social consequences. Deciding to vaccinate isn't like deciding whether to circumcise, home-school, baptize or give your child a silly name. It's one that renders "different strokes," "life-and-let-live" relativism nonsensical, because vaccination only works well if most people do it.

But why would parents think collectively? The social contract is, in many ways, failing us. High-quality day care, for example, is expensive; a year at one well-regarded center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan costs nearly as much as my entire college education. Regina Chiu, an Upper West Sider who is vaccinating her baby but following the slower schedule influenced by Stephanie Cave's book, admits, "I might have made a different decision if he were in day care." (Her child is relatively safe from infectious diseases, because he doesn't interact with many other children.) In many places, public schools are not great. Health insurance coverage for families is Deciding to vaccinate isn't like deciding whether to circumcise, home-school, baptize or give your child a silly name.increasingly expensive. Most companies don't provide day care or a decent amount of family leave time. Since society isn't doing much to help us take care of our kids, many of us conclude that we are, as Judith Warner suggests in Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, on our own. Plenty of us respond by pretending we're raising our children in a bubble. While that's understandable, it's not sensible. By not vaccinating, we're rejecting one of the few effective things that our society has done for children, and undermining a collective effort to keep everyone safe.

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©2007 Liza Featherstone and Nerve Media