One thing I would say to the restaurant owner and his wife is that if they had extra and simply didn’t want to throw it away, they could donate to a milk bank. HMBANA is an organization overseeing the milk banks in the U.S. http://www.hmbana.org. It’s a pretty easy process, and the milk is screened for bacteria, pasteurized, and fed to preemies, sick babies, etc. whose mothers can’t make enough milk due to their own sickness or other issues.

The mother in this case believed that it was her child – a believe bolstered by the myth of infallible maternal intuition. When the mistake was revealed, she wasn’t just learning that she had inadvertently fed someone else’s child (a fact that may cause some discomfort, but probably not great consternation). She was also realizing that her “mommy instinct” was not as infallible as she’d been led to believe. This belief was tied to her identity as a mother. Naturally, she was deeply hurt – which probably motivated the extreme indignation that led to the lawsuit.

Of course, the solution isn’t to condone the lawsuit, but to tone down the rhetoric of mommy instinct. The fact is, you might not know your kid from another instantly. And that doesn’t make you a bad mother (or father – but we dads aren’t expected to have perfect intuitions). It just makes you human.

At least, that’s my take on it.