Courtesy of Capitol Buzz, via Eschaton, we learn snippets from the new book by Rick Santorum, someone who I think I met in the Hall of the Doomed-To-Repeat-Idiocies many centuries ago. Santorum is revolting, I'm sorry to say.
Anyway, here you can read his ideas:
"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 confess that both of them really don't need to, or at least may not need to work as much as they do… And for some parents, the purported need to provide things for their children simply provides a convenient rationalization for pursuing a gratifying career outside the home." (It Takes a Family, 94)
Hmmm. And what are you doing, Mr. Santorum? You have a large litter of children at home, don't you? You don't really need to earn all that money. You could take a less rewarding job and spend more time at home where you belong. At least before you tell the really poor what to do and how their lives actually look.
"Many women have told me, and surveys have shown, that they find it easier, more "professionally" gratifying, and certainly more socially affirming, to work outside the home than to give up their careers to take care of their children. Think about that for a moment…Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism, one of the core philosophies of the village elders." (It Takes a Family, 95)
Funny, I thought that the greater social esteem of working outside the home comes from the way the society is structured. You know, all that stuff about the breadwinner being the head of the household, all those housewife jokes some decades ago, all that "just a housewife" stuff, all those divorce settlements in the past where the earner took the largest chunk of the total wealth. Santorum also doesn't remember all those books which wrote about how women are capable of doing nothing of creative worth which can be shown by the fact that so few of them are out there doing it and so on. But no, there is no "woman problem" for Santorum, except for the one of getting them under good control.
"But unlike abortion today, in most states even the slaveholder did not have the unlimited right to kill his slave." ((It Takes a Family, 241)
Did you know that Santorum is a devout Catholic who has never read the Bible? Even I have read it, many times over, and I'm not even Christian. But he's the one people respect as a true believer. All he seems to do is to preach to others to give up everything he wouldn't give up for himself: freedom, a public voice, a career. But of course that is perfectly acceptable as these others are women.