Ethical Responsivity and Pediatric Parental Pedagogy

Abstract

This article explores the experience of ethical responsivity from the perspective of the parent whose child requires medical care. The concern is with the lived meaning of ethics itself as it originates and wells up in the parent’s experience of being touched by his or her child. Examples are taken from the practice of neonatal-perinatal medicine where newborns require hospitalization for issues such as prematurity, transitional problems, congenital abnormalities, and so forth. Here, the condition of the child and the techno-medical environment itself have the potential of complicating the touching contact of parent and child.