Motherhood, at least in its first days, can resemble quarantine. As the mother’s body recovers from childbirth, and the infant learns the rhythms of the world outside the womb—how to eat, how to sleep—the nuclear family spins a cocoon, fortifying new bonds. In some cultures, this time apart is strictly imposed, as, for instance, in the traditional Chinese practice of “sitting the month,” in which mother and child are forbidden to leave home, or in the Latin American cuarentena (the same word means “quarantine”), a forty-day period of convalescence. Eventually, the isolation ends: the infant gets her first shots, the mother heals, and the family ventures into the world.
