Marian Leonard Tompson is one of the seven founders of
La Leche League International. She was President of La Leche League for 24 years, from 1956 to 1980, and a member of the Founders Advisory Council. Wife of the late Clement Tompson, she is the mother of seven children, a grandmother and great-grandmother. An early advocate of
home birth
A home birth is a birth that takes place in a residence rather than in a hospital or a birthing center. They may be attended by a midwife, or lay attendant with experience in managing home births. Home birth was, until the advent of modern medic ...
, four of her children, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren were born at home.
Career
Tompson was instrumental in developin
Breastfeeding Seminars for Physicianshosted regularly by La Leche League and held annually since 1973. She has served on many boards, committees and advisory councils, including the International Advisory Council for the
World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action
The World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) is a network of people working on a global scale to eliminate obstacles to breastfeeding and to act on the Innocenti Declaration. The groups within this alliance tackle the problems from a variet ...
(1996 to present).; the Advisory Board for the National Association of Post Partum Care Services (1995), the Advisory Committee for Perinatal Health, Department of Public Health for the State of Illinois (1983); and served as a consultant for the
WHO
Who or WHO may refer to:
* Who (pronoun), an interrogative or relative pronoun
* Who?, one of the Five Ws in journalism
* World Health Organization
Arts and entertainment Fictional characters
* Who, a creature in the Dr. Seuss book '' Horton He ...
/
UNICEF
UNICEF (), originally called the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund in full, now officially United Nations Children's Fund, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to ...
meeting on Infant and Young Child Feeding in Geneva, Switzerland in 1980.
Tompson is an engaging speaker, often representing La Leche League at local, national and international conferences, traveling to more than 20 countries in doing so.
When questions and concerns about breastfeeding and HIV/AIDS arose in the late 1990s, Tompson began to ask questions about the available research. This resulted i
AnotherLook at Breastfeeding and HIV/AIDS a nonprofit organization founded in 2001 dedicated to gathering information, raising critical questions, and stimulating research about breastfeeding in the context of HIV/AIDS. She is president and CEO.
Mrs. Tompson was named a Living Treasure by
Mothering (magazine)
''Mothering'' magazine was a magazine published from 1976 to 2011. Its tagline was "the magazine of natural family living" and it had a printed circulation of 100,000. The magazine was located in southern Colorado from 1976 to 1978, in Albuquerqu ...
in March 1998.
In 2010 Marian Tompson was asked by
Dr. Thomas W. Hale o
Hale Publishingto write her memoir, with the assistance of Melissa Clark Vickers. ''Passionate Journey, My Unexpected Life'' was published in June 2011.
Interviews
In the September/October 1982 issue of
Mother Earth News
''Mother Earth News'' is a bi-monthly American magazine that has a circulation of 500,520 . It is published in Topeka, Kansas.
Since its founding, ''Mother Earth News'' has promoted renewable energy, recycling, family farms, good agricultural ...
, Mrs. Tompson was extensively interviewed about La Leche League and the benefits of homebirth. Included are photos of the homebirth of one of her grandchildren, Austin Scott Davies
THE PLOWBOY INTERVIEW by Pat Stone
In March, 2007, Mrs. Tompson was interviewed by the
Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. “I had wanted to breastfeed my babies. Yet with my first three babies, and I had three different doctors, I was never able to breastfeed past six months,” Tompson said."
In an interview on December 27, 2007, by the Pioneer Press for the Wilmette Life she explained how she was elected the first president of La Leche League: "They made me the president because it was my idea," Tompson said. "I was very shy and retiring."
She also described her first medication free birth at a local hospital:
"I was the only one in the hospital they had seen who had a natural birth," Tompson said. When Tompson gave birth to her third child, a group of 17 hospital employees—externs, interns, even the receptionist—came to watch. "They circled my delivery table," Tompson said. "After it was over, one of the residents walked up to my doctor and said, 'Doctor, how did you do it?'"
La Leche League Turns 50, Pioneer Press, December 27, 2007
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Publications
*
, Marian Leonard Tompson with Melissa Clark Vickers
Hale Publishing L.P.
2011,
* ''The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding'', La Leche League International, Co-author, 1st-6th Editions, 1958, 1963, 1981, 1987, 1991
* "The convenience of breast feeding" American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 24, Issue 8, 991–992, August 1, 197
Article
References
Mothering Magazine
Mothering Magazine March 1998
External links
La Leche League International
Another Look
Mothering Magazine
World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action
Marian Tompson at Hale Publishing
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tompson, Marian
Breastfeeding activists
American health activists
HIV/AIDS researchers
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people