Only after understanding the objectives of the profession may one proceed to state the ethical norms for the profession. Through fulfilling the ethical norms of a profession, one not only serves the client or patient in need of help from the professional. One also fulfills oneself as a person and develops the skills and virtues proper to the profession. Certainly, they provide health care for infants and children at the request of the parents. But they also care for infants as agents of the community or society.
Society needs healthy children.
Society strives to foster the well-being of children, especially the weaker ones, When infants are born in a debilitated condition, not only their parents but society at large has an interest in assuring that the ailing infants will become as strong and as healthy as possible. In a very real sense, neonatologlsts and pediatricians are the delegates of society. They have a direct responsibility to the child that does not stem entirely from the parents. The philosophy behind this delegation and the desire for children to be strong and healthy is not based upon a perverted notion that the child exists for the society. Rather, the delegation results from the assumption that society exists far the individual.