Thanksgiving dinner comes with a few non-negotiable staples. Turkey, obviously. Mac and cheese, sweet potato casserole, and green beans, all iconic staples since the Mayflower. It is comforting precisely because it is predictable, and everyone knows what they are getting.
But nothing stirs up Thanksgiving quite like when someone brings something completely unexpected to the table. In this particular case, what got served up in the guest room was so far outside the expected menu that the evening ended early, a family relationship got ruined, and the internet has been arguing about it ever since.
More info: Reddit
Thanksgiving comes with a predictable menu and a predictable cast of characters, but every so often, someone serves a side dish no one was prepared for
Image credits: shurkin_son / Magnific (not the actual photo)
An eight-year-old said she wanted “mommy's” when offered a plate of food, and the host assumed the child meant the mother’s casserole that was being served
Image credits: Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels (not the actual photo)
The host was shocked to realize the chef’s special that was being served was a healthy helping of breastmilk, and not the casserole in question
Image credits: Liza Summer / Pexels (not the actual photo)
The nursing mother saw nothing wrong with her actions and simply said the child was hungry, completely misreading the situation
Image credits: anonymous
The host and her boyfriend, who was also the nursing woman’s stepson, chose to break contact with the family for a while to try to pick their jaws up from the floor
One fateful Thanksgiving, things were going perfectly normally until the eight-year-old started complaining she was hungry. The narrator offered to take the child to the kitchen to make a plate, but the daughter refused, saying she “wanted mommy's.” The mother sighed and took her into the guest room, which everyone assumed was to deal with the tantrum.
The OP made up a plate of the casserole the woman had brought and went to deliver it to the guest room. She knocked, and when she opened the door, she found the step-mom fully breastfeeding her eight-year-old daughter. Holding her in her lap, stroking her hair, the works! She let out a loud cry, and her boyfriend came rushing in, equally shaken to find his step-mom in this position.
The detail that made it worse was something the step-mom had mentioned previously: that she had never been able to breastfeed either of her daughters. This raised an obvious and deeply uncomfortable question about what exactly was happening in that guest room and why. The girlfriend and boyfriend cut the evening short and politely asked everyone to leave so they could digest what they had seen.
As the step-mom was on her way out, she pulled the girlfriend aside and told her she had no right to judge her and that her daughter was simply hungry. The boyfriend went low contact with his dad and step-mom after this, a decision that had been building for a while due to other incidents, and banned them from the house entirely. Especially from the dinner table…
Image credits: kues1 / Magnific (not the actual photo)
This topic is considerably more nuanced than a shocked reaction in a doorway might suggest. Anthropological data shows that the natural age of self-weaning, meaning weaning determined entirely by the child rather than the parent, falls somewhere between 2.5 and 7 years old. Extended breastfeeding is practiced in many cultures around the world and is not universally considered unusual.
However, Dr. Max Davie says that beyond the age of two, there is limited evidence of any additional nutritional benefit from breastfeeding. By that point, a child should be getting everything they need through a regular diet, which means that continuing beyond two is more about comfort and attachment than nutrition. That is a legitimate parenting choice, but it does reframe the eight-year-old's “hunger” a little.
As for the step-mom's previous claim that she was unable to breastfeed, that detail is worth examining. Experts note that each breastfeeding journey is unique, and the body can produce approximately 30% more milk during a second or third pregnancy than during the first. It is entirely possible that what she could not do with her first children became possible later.
None of that fully explains the secrecy, the guest room, or the defensive parting comment on the way out. Those details are what the internet is still picking apart. When something is this far outside the lines of “normal,” it is always a little hard to recover. So this narrator and her boyfriend had a little more to be thankful for that Thanksgiving—severed family ties, for example.
Do you think this is acceptable behavior, or should this mom rethink feeding time? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Netizens were shaken, saying this 'was enough internet for the day,’ fully siding with the shaken couple
