by Mary Jessica Hammes
September 27, 2011

Marian Leonard Tompson is not widely recognized, but she created a tidal wave of breastfeeding support generations ago when few women breastfed, and even fewer participated in a “nurse-in” to protest public breastfeeding policy.

Modest and unassuming, Tompson co-founded La Leche League (LLL), and served as its president for 24 years.

Her memoir, Passionate Journey: My Unexpected Life, written with one of baby gooroo’s writers, Melissa Clark Vickers, is an engaging look at Tompson’s ability to combine modern trailblazing with a traditional life. It is also a poignant reminder of how attitudes toward birth and breastfeeding have changed, and a testimony to the power of one woman in affecting that change.

In describing her life as “unexpected,” Tompson readily admits that she never intended to pursue a career. Instead, when she was only 19 years old, she traded her dream of becoming a prima ballerina for marriage and children. She and her beloved husband, Clement “Tom” Tompson, had seven biological children and numerous foster kids. Not surprisingly, both she and Tom had a flair for doing the unexpected.

“My life would never have turned out the way it did with another man,” she writes. “Tom later told me that when we met, he realized that I was an independent thinker and needed my freedom…Tom not only recognized that need, but was willing to give me the support and encouragement.”

There was no shortage of support from Tom as Marian breastfed their children, a choice few women made, at a time when doctors provided little information or encouragement. Marian also chose home births for four of her children, keeping her babies close, cuddling them when they cried, and even wearing them in a Mexico rebozo years before babywearing was fashionable. In essence, Marian practiced attachment parenting before it became the buzzword it is today.

Family was always important to Tompson. She grew up in Chicago, moved to an unincorporated area of Melrose Park during her last year of high school, and met her husband soon after graduation. They married in 1949 and lived near her parents, before moving to Franklin Park, where they lived in the same house for 50 years.

She and her husband had always wanted a large family. When her first baby was born in a local hospital, Marian insisted on a natural birth.

“During labor, because I was awake, I became acutely aware of how unsuitable a place the hospital was to have a baby, and how clueless most birth attendants were to the needs of the woman in labor,” she writes.

Her husband was not allowed in the delivery room, where she overheard medical staff scolding laboring women for making loud noises. A nurse, unaccustomed to a conscious woman in labor, mistakenly covered Tompson’s head with a sheet. Nonetheless, Tompson achieved a natural birth and breastfed her child, despite a period of separation, severe engorgement, painful nipples, and conflicting advice from hospital staff.

“Somehow, breastfeeding was a wonderful, nurturing experience and Tom was my greatest supporter,” she writes.

Tompson was able to overcome the obstacles. It wasn’t until she started talking to other women involved in their church that she realized they were facing the same obstacles.

“Women didn’t talk to each other about such intimate things in those days, and it was startling to learn that several of our friends were bottle-feeding their babies as their second choice,” she writes.

She was convinced that something had to be done.

She discussed the issue with her friends, who in turn invited their friends to join the discussion. La Leche League was born. A group of seven remarkable women—Tompson, Mary White, Edwina Froehlich, Viola Lennon, Mary Ann Kerwin, Mary Ann Cahill, and Betty Wagner—banded together, determined to make a difference. Tompson was elected president.

“I was too shy to make a fuss about it and agreed,” she writes. “After all, in a small town like Franklin Park, how much work could being president be?”

She hadn’t considered that women beyond Franklin Park might need her help, but as word of LLL grew, requests for information started coming in from other states. A series of lessons and an instructional course, available via the mail, eventually morphed into what is now a staple for all breastfeeding mothers, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding.

Within just a few years, Tompson was speaking nationwide and building quite a reputation as someone who spoke her mind about breastfeeding and childbirth.

One of the great charms of the memoir is Tompson’s candidness in sharing how nervous she was at the beginning of her speaking career—a stark contrast to her later confidence in speaking her voice. She writes how she put on red lipstick named “Bold” to steel her nerves before speaking as a panelist for the first time at a large conference in Chicago, and how she worried that she might never see her family again as she prepared to fly (for the very first time) to Seattle for a conference.

Yet, this is the same woman who arranged for Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, author of Childbirth Without Fear to speak at a conference in 1957—and when she was told that “the doctor was such an important person it would be much more appropriate that he be introduced by a man,” she firmly said that she, a woman who by then had had five natural births, was the individual most qualified to introduce Dr. Dick-Read.

Tompson grew bolder with age, focusing attention on breastfeeding in places where marketing had mistakenly convinced parents and doctors that infant formula was best. She lectured in Jamaica, India, Africa, and the West Indies, where formula advertisements promised healthier, smarter babies, and advertising campaigns touted formula’s superiority.

Tompson, who retired as a LLL Leader in 2010, writes touchingly of her husband’s unexpected death in 1981 and of her mother’s in 1990. Now 82, Tompson stays busy with many of the things her contemporaries enjoy including yoga classes and book clubs. But she continues to work and currently serves as president and CEO of AnotherLook, a not-for-profit organization that focuses on issues and research related to HIV and breastfeeding.

“I was never aware I was semi-retired,” she writes. “Guess I’ve just been too busy to notice… It’s a good life.”

Tompson’s life is not only good, it’s fascinating, making Passionate Journey: My Unexpected Life an inspiring read.

Mary Jessica Hammes is an Athens, Georgia-based writer, trapeze instructor, knitter, gardener, comic book enthusiast, and hula hooper. She is mom to Tommy.