From Sterilization to Parent Advocacy: Mildred Thomson's Social Work Career

Recent scholarship has demonstrated the important role that individual administrators played in modern welfare governance. This paper examines the career of one such administrator, Mildred Thomson, who directed Minnesota’s Department for the Feebleminded (later Section on Mental Retardation) from 1924 to 1959. Thomson ran the state’s eugenic sterilization program for almost 35 years, but she was also an early supporter of the parent movement and facilitated the 1950 creation of the National Association for Retarded Children (now the ARC). In the 1990s, disability advocate Gunnar Dybwad praised Thomson’s “enlightened concern for the retarded that was far ahead of her time.”

Thomson’s shift from sterilizing “feebleminded” girls to facilitating parent activism reflected many difficult conversations. In the 1930s, Thomson persuaded parents to consent to their daughters’ sterilization. In the 1940s, she informed parents of their children’s disabilities and helped plan their care. At the end of her career, the difficult conversations came from a different direction: younger social workers who saw Thomson as an embarrassment disparaged her experience and encouraged her to retire. Thomson’s often-tense relationships with male superiors and complicated interactions with clients she saw as children regardless of age marked her entire career, which was consistent in its focus on supervising “the retarded” in the community.  Analyzing the twists and turns of Thomson’s career, this paper highlights the in-between status of social work-administrators and the ongoing struggle for the dignity of people with intellectual disabilities.