But in Western societies, the mother is mostly left to her own devices after birth, her own privacy and autonomy. While being told to stay inside for forty days does sound quite intense, our approach means we don’t honor or acknowledge what a woman has done, or have a sufficient cultural way of marking the passage into a new stage of existence. “The individual mother is left to grapple with the fact that she is not only the source of life but also of potential death for her child,” writes Rozsika Parker.[10]
