Santorum's book urges more moms stay home

WASHINGTON-- Sen. Rick Santorum's bid for re-election in 2006 is already the most closely watched race in Washington and the "never say never" part of his answer to whether he'll run for president in 2008 only keeps those rumors flying.



On the Internet Read more about Sen. Rick Santorum's book



So not long after his first book, "It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good," hit Washington bookstores over the Fourth of July weekend, his opponents were sifting through the 430 pages at warp speed -- culling controversial passages in which the Pennsylvania Republican criticizes public schools, America's "divorce culture" and argues that more American families should consider whether both parents really need to work.

Many early conversations about the book yesterday on the Internet centered on a section in which Santorum advocates parents spending more time at home with their children -- part of the book's central theme that fostering the traditional family headed by a married man and woman can solve many of society's ills.

"In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might find they don't both need to," Santorum writes.

Many women, he adds, have told him that it is more "socially affirming to work outside the home than to give up their careers to take care of their children."

That ideology, he says, has been shaped by feminists who demean the work of women who stay at home as primary caregivers.

"What happened in America so that mothers and fathers who leave their children in the care of someone else -- or worse yet, home alone after school between three and six in the afternoon -- find themselves more affirmed by society? Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism," Santorum writes.

"Sadly the propaganda campaign launched in the 1960s has taken root," said Santorum. "The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness."

Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairman Rep. T.J. Rooney jumped on that assertion yesterday as one that would alienate female voters.

He described the excerpts he had seen as a "mind-bending read" sure to create fodder for the campaign against Santorum in 2006, when he is expected to face off against state Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr., a socially conservative Democrat.

"References to how families are compromised when both parents work outside the home, how it takes a societal toll on Pennsylvania families or American families, it just shows a complete lack of understanding of the real world in which the vast majority of Pennsylvanians reside," Rooney said.

In much of the book, Santorum focuses on what he describes as his brand of compassionate conservatism -- which has been a key theme in many of his recent speeches that have drawn criticism from Democrats who say he is engaged in pre-election maneuvering.

He writes that until now there hasn't been a coherent conservative agenda for low-income Americans, but that in contrast "liberal" economic policies have been "devastating to the poor" and have dismantled the traditional family.

Drawing on oft-quoted sources ranging from Alexis de Tocqueville to Robert Putnam, author of the 2000 book "Bowling Alone," Santorum argues that many of the problems of America poor can be solved by championing initiatives that encourage connections to family and community -- often through faith-based organizations.

They include fatherhood training programs, more tax relief for families raising children, changes that make divorce more difficult -- and even training professionals from hospital workers to welfare case workers to public educators on how to help couples see the benefits of marriage.

He touts his work on initiatives such as the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, signed by President Clinton, as an initiative reversed a program that he describes as a "spin cycle" -- one that had kept families running in place instead of helping them out of poverty.

Throughout the book, Santorum targets "liberals" who, he says, advocate s "no fault freedom" or freedom without responsibility. He aims his fire at entities he calls --"the Bigs" -- a category that includes "big media," "big universities and public schools" and some "big businesses" run by the "liberal elite," who he says shape American life and values in a way that is destructive.

He criticizes policies put forward by a likely 2008 contender Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. -- in part in her book "It Takes a Village" -- stating that they boil "down to little more than feel-good rhetoric masking a radical left agenda."

One example of the consequences of no-fault freedom, he says, is how sexual freedom has resulted in "the debasement of women, mental illness, and an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, causing infertility cancer, even death."

He also rails against the "hostile cultural climate" -- influenced by the moral values shown on television shows such as "Friends" and "Sex in the City" to violent video games -- where parents must raise their kids, and praises companies such as Wal-Mart for refusing to sell some music CD's with offensive language.

He also explains his decision to school his children at home -- an issue Democrats say they will raise in the 2006 campaign. Santorum's wife Karen Garver Santorum, who has written two books of her own, is raising their six children at home and home-schooling them.

Santorum states that schools are not mentioned in the Constitution and writes that he believes America's founders agreed that education would be best accomplished by the family and voluntary associations rather than the state.

While noting that he admires the work of thousands of teachers across America, he said the people who "sit atop" the nation's educational systems, from the faculty at education schools to heads of teachers unions, have "a clear liberal agenda." He defends home-schooling as an opportunity to interact with children in a more complex way, to teach them moral values and give them more individual time, and tries to refute criticisms that home-schooled children are not as well adapted.

"By asking the right question, we can see that when it comes to socialization, mass education is really the aberration, not homeschooling," he writes. "Never before in human history have a majority of children spent at least half their waking hours in the presence of 25 to 35 unrelated children of exactly the same age (and usually the same socio-economic status)..." he writes. "It's amazing that so many kids turn out to be fairly normal, considering the weird socialization they get in public schools."

Phil Singer, the spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee who picked up his copy at a bookstore on Capitol Hill, said if there were "any lingering questions about whether Rick Santorum is out of step with the mainstream, this book firmly lays them to rest."

The book's official publication date is July 25.

First published on July 6, 2005 at 12:00 am