In order to get around public health limitations that were meant to fight the virus by keeping sick children home from school, roughly a quarter of American parents lied about their kids’ health condition throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a research released Monday.
The survey, “Public Health Parental Nonadherence to Health Policy Recommendations for Prevention of COVID-19 Transmission Among Children,” found that approximately 25.9% of the parents who took part in the study reported misrepresentation or nonadherence in at least one of seven categories related to reporting their children’s health related to COVID-19.
These findings ‘indicate that some [public health measures] implemented to control the spread of COVID-19 may have been compromised due to misrepresentation and nonadherence by parents on behalf of their children, contributing to COVID-19-related morbidity and mortality,’ according to the study, which was published in the Monday issue of JAMA Network Open.
The poll questioned parents if they had ever engaged in particular “misrepresentation and non-adherence behaviors” and provided the respondents with broad, multiple-choice explanations for their acts, such as “I would have to miss work” and “my child would miss school.”
In the survey, it was discovered that 150 of the 580 online respondents claimed they had lied about themselves by failing to disclose symptoms or had violated stay-at-home rules by bringing kids to school even though they had tested positive for the virus.
The findings revealed that “wanting to exercise personal independence as a parent” was the most frequent motivation, followed by the desire for their child’s “life to feel normal” and the inability to skip work or other obligations in order to stay at home.
