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Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on a group of parents living in the Bergamo aerea, close to the center of Italian COVID breackdown, who have decided not to vaccinate their children. The aim Is to understand if and how this choice affected or reshaped parental strategy during the pandemic.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on a group of parents who chose for themselves and proposed to their children not to use the COVID vaccine.

I met these parents during a research project on "vaccine hesitancy" that I am carrying out in the Bergamo area, the center of the Italian pandemic breakdown.

Attwell, among others, shown that vaccination hesitancy arises together with other parenting choices (2017) that are related to health but also involve trust in institutions and how parents place themselves and their children in the present and future societies (Poltorack et alii, 2005).

Reframing Hesitancy in the context of the pandemic seems as necessary as it is interesting because this parents' choices now have to face phenomena and dangers that put into question the way we can live together (Kelly, Keck, Lynteris, 2019) and that make the present unsafe and the future uncertain.

Through in-depth interviews and close observation of certain moments in family life, I intend to describe how this vaccination choice Is inscribed and redefined parenting.

I want to document and analyse what these parents perceived as a risk and a threat to their children's present and future, what meaning they gave to the idea of protection and wellbeing within the pandemic framework, and how they thought they could secure it, relying on what resources, relationships and knowledge.

If possible, I intend to investigate the conflicts that may have arisen between parents and children over vaccination choice, also gathering the voices of their children and acknowledging their positioning