ABSTRACT
Distance may afford an understanding of the potential closeness of parent and child. The parent is with-out her child, with the leakage of milk providing an existential, ethical reminder of the absent presence of her son. The parent is touched by the ethical demand of the child, prior to asking for something in return, feeling this otherness, the child's need, from within. Perhaps for some parents, in an environment of technology and illness, it is hard to develop a sense of closeness. The parental experiences of ethical responsivity, and the formation of attachment, are saturated with complex meanings. The profundity of parental ethical responsivity speaks to the significant position parents play in making decisions for their children. In the passage from birth to death, the newborn baby has been incorporated into the social world through the mediation of neonatal medicine, but these intense and primary ties have to be estranged and severed at the time of their departure.
