I didn't know the vaccine had a history of not working--my niece and nephew are 15 and 11 respectively, had to be vaccinated before starting kindergarten, and neither of them have had it.
This doesn't bother me that much, since having chicken pox as an adult or teenager can be agony and missing a week (or more!) of your life at that age is far more disruptive than it is while you're in school. I'm not sure I'd do it with my (non-existent) children, though.
My mother deliberately kept us away from chicken pox and kids who might have it; whereas most parents didn't encourage their kid to get it, they saw it as a fact of life. Her reasoning had
nothing to do with our health--she simply didn't like how chickenpox blisters looked. She and 4 of her siblings were sick at the same time and she always talked about how disgusting they looked.
Well, my sister got it when she was 21, and I was 15. My sister was out of school and work for 2 weeks--when she was in college! I was 15, and ended up being extremely sick (like, hospital level) and also out of school for about 3 weeks. There were labs that I couldn't make up and classes that I missed outright since 3 weeks wasn't considered a long enough time to have a home tutor, my grades suffered. I went from being #1 in my class to being completely out of the top 10%. For the most part, I was able to make it up in subsequent semesters, however, but it really sucked there for a bit. To boot, I had AP and IB exams that year and I spent a lot of time trying to make it up.
I'd imagine that if we had it younger, then we either would have had less severe cases. Also, missing that much school in grade school isn't that devastating. The funny thing is, we didn't really have the dreaded facial blisters.
