"Having children made us look differently at all these things that we take for granted, like taking your child to get a vaccine against measles or polio"
About this Quote
Parenthood is doing quiet, radical work on your sense of what counts as "normal". Gates frames that shift with a deceptively domestic image: the routine errand of taking a kid for a measles or polio shot. It lands because it treats public health not as ideology, not as philanthropy, but as the most intimate kind of logistics: protecting a small body you love. The sentence is built around "we take for granted", a phrase that carries both gratitude and indictment. Gratitude, because vaccines are one of the few modern miracles that actually show up on schedule. Indictment, because the ability to treat that miracle as mundane is a privilege unevenly distributed.
The intent is clearly persuasive, but it avoids the usual charity-campaign spectacle. Instead of centering suffering, she centers contrast: a world where immunization is a default versus a world where it is a gamble, a journey, a cost, a rumor, or a bureaucratic wall. "Having children made us look differently" also works as soft credentialing. It implies: we didnt arrive at global health through abstract spreadsheets; we arrived through parental fear and responsibility. That move humanizes wealth-driven advocacy while also quietly justifying it.
The context matters: Gates has long been a major voice in vaccine funding and global health infrastructure. In an era when vaccination gets dragged into culture wars, the line tries to re-anchor the debate in care, not controversy. Its subtext is pointed: if you can take polio eradication for granted, you are living inside the success story others are still trying to reach.
The intent is clearly persuasive, but it avoids the usual charity-campaign spectacle. Instead of centering suffering, she centers contrast: a world where immunization is a default versus a world where it is a gamble, a journey, a cost, a rumor, or a bureaucratic wall. "Having children made us look differently" also works as soft credentialing. It implies: we didnt arrive at global health through abstract spreadsheets; we arrived through parental fear and responsibility. That move humanizes wealth-driven advocacy while also quietly justifying it.
The context matters: Gates has long been a major voice in vaccine funding and global health infrastructure. In an era when vaccination gets dragged into culture wars, the line tries to re-anchor the debate in care, not controversy. Its subtext is pointed: if you can take polio eradication for granted, you are living inside the success story others are still trying to reach.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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