Sen. Rick Santorum’s Book, "It Takes a Family", Urges More Mothers To Stay at Home

The outspoken Pennsylvania Senator, who may run for President in 2008, asserts that too many women focus on their work, rather than on their families.

“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.

TheStateOf…Women in the workplace. My wife and I are dealing with this issue right now. We agreed when she became pregnant that she would stay home with our baby for one year, and then go back to work if she felt like it. Lately, she’s been saying that she doesn’t want to stay home because she fears it may affect her career. She also says that she doesn’t want to be embarassed when she tells people that she is a “stay at home Mom.” So Santorum’s views are landing on listening ears, at least when it comes to me. I believe that, if a woman has a choice, she should stay home with her kids as long as possible. There’s no replacing that early time with a child, and the primary role of the woman is that of the mother. Anything else, in my opinion, is unnatural.