Table 2. Select Quotations From Mothers on Child Dental Fluoride Information With Familial Relations.

Family relation	Quote
Supporting fluoride use for children
Grandfather	“But she said it’s just a kids’ fancy one with no fluoride. And I said, ‘Oh, no. You should get one with fluoride,’ because that’s the kind of lovely sister-in-law I am that I was like, ‘No, no, no. It’s really important.’ But that might have been influenced very much from my grandfather.”
Mother	“My mom did talk to me about fluoride treatments for the kids. They [my parents] believed in fluoride treatments.”
Father	“My mom didn’t want to do it because she said for millennia, kids have been drinking their parent’s breast milk without fluoride drops and have been just fine so breast milk has everything you need. My dad said, ‘Well, no, because I feel like I’ve been told they need fluoride drops. I’m going to do these drops.’”
Not supporting fluoride use for children
Grandfather	“I feel like [distrust of fluoride] is always connected with people putting things in the water.”
	“I’ve never heard of people being against fluoride toothpaste. But I’ve always heard people say don’t put fluoride in my water. The closest somebody would have been would be one of my friends’ parents or something and they mentioned it in passing.”
	“I do have that one very opinionated grandfather that, everything the government does is wrong. It might have come from there and I just wrote it off because I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s just him.’”
Mother	“My mom talks about distrusting fluoride. We only got fluoride when [we] were kids. I don’t know if this is true or not true, but she said it put white spots on our teeth. I think she doesn’t so much maybe believe in giving the kids extra stuff that they don’t need. It’s kind of like ‘don’t give them medicine if they don’t need it’ kind of take on things.”
Extended family	“My family in Maryland. My cousin has an allergy to [fluoride] and they get special expensive filtered water without fluoride. And they also have a special head on their shower that does something with the fluoride in the water.”
	“And I’m even suspicious of it just because—I don’t know. Corporation. I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist at all. I just don’t know the full history of why it’s added, why do we take it, and why it’s supplemented. And I guess, because I don’t have all the information. I’m not too willing to trust it just because somebody tells me I should. I know they do sell toothpaste without fluoride in it. I don’t know why or what the benefit is.”
Grandmother	“My daughter spends a lot of time with my great-grandmother. We call her ‘Baba,’ and she takes care of [my daughter] every day after school. She picks her up around noon, she goes home, they eat lunch. [My daughter] brushes her teeth every day at Baba’s before nap time. The only frustration I have there: I can’t get my Grandma on board with not using the training toothpaste. She kind of worries that [my daughter] doesn’t spit well enough. And that is just a worry of hers, even though we use the regular children’s toothpaste at home. But I think Grandma still uses the training toothpaste at her house, which, I mean, I guess is fine. Her teeth are still getting brushed and everything…I even bought a tube to send to her house. But I don’t think it’s getting used because I’ve seen it on the counter. But who knows? They might be transitioning. I’ve tried to ask, and she’s just like, ‘You just let me do me.’”