‘92 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION : Will Tipper Gore’s Values Strike Home? : Issues: Once criticized for a record-labeling crusade, many now believe her stance on family concerns will be an asset.

Mary Elizabeth (Tipper) Gore is the very model of a traditional American suburban woman. She is a mother of four who drives the neighborhood car pool of kids to school. Her husband, vice presidential candidate Sen. Al Gore, heads to the office in the morning and she heads out for a fast walk to exercise or, more recently, for a few miles of rollerblading with a friend.

Except for the Rollerblades, her daily life is probably similar to that of an earlier generation--much like that of First Lady Barbara Bush, a mother of five. But Tipper Gore, who grew up preparing for a career, faced more of a choice than earlier generations, a daunting choice confronting many young families today.

Gore decided to forgo her career and raise her family. Hillary Clinton, wife of the Democrat’s presumptive presidential nominee, made another choice--raising her daughter while pursuing a law practice.

“Two-earner families today can look at these women and say, ‘They know what my life is like,’ ” said Ann Lewis, a political commentator and correspondent for Ms. Magazine. “What the women’s movement has been about is (women) making the decisions that are right for them. Here we have two different examples of the (generational) change.”

Like the baby-boom leadership advertised by their husbands on the Democratic ticket, Tipper Gore and Hillary Clinton are also role models for those who face the increasingly complex issues in the modern American home--be they careers, or drugs or the sex and violence in music lyrics.

More than four years ago, shortly before her husband campaigned for the presidential nomination in 1988, Tipper Gore gained national attention when she helped organize a group of Washington spouses for a crusade to place warning labels on music that contains explicitly sexual or violent lyrics.

Even though her campaign struck a chord with many Americans, she was derisively described by critics as a sexually repressed suburban PTA mother who tut-tutted at rock stars and shook her finger at dirty words.

But things have changed, both for her and in the nation’s concerns about the increasing burdens that society places on American home life.

As she steps back onto the political stage at the Democratic National Convention here this week, Tipper Gore’s friends and supporters believe that the 1992 character test for national figures has a new set of standards that will fit her favorably.

Her music crusade was considered prudish in 1988, they said, but today it is a counter to Vice President Dan Quayle’s claim that Republicans are the party of family values.

“The general public has much more background for this debate now,” said Nancy Hoit, a family friend and adviser to Sen. Gore.

At the Intercontinental Hotel in New York, Tipper Gore is surrounded by a beehive of activity that is a long way from her days at home in Nashville, Tenn., or, while Congress is in session, in Arlington, Va.

She is polite and soft-spoken in an interview, saying she is excited about the campaign and stressing the need for the changes represented by the Democratic ticket. But, so far at least, she is tentative about taking on the Republicans with her own arsenal of family values ammunition.

“I think (Quayle) was making a point that our popular culture is pervasive and it affects all of us,” she said. “I would agree with that. Where I disagree with him is, where are any policies from (President) Bush and Quayle that truly address the families?”

Perhaps Tipper Gore’s decision to forgo her own career was in hopes of creating the stable family life that she never had as a child. Her parents divorced early and she was raised largely by her mother and grandparents. Her nickname, Tipper, comes from a childhood lullaby that her mother used to sing to her.

She remembers a politically active household, growing up in the same Arlington, Va., home where she and her family now live during the months that Congress is in session. One childhood memory is of selling pencils with her mother to help in a gubernatorial campaign.

Then Tipper Aitcheson said she was taunted at school because she did not have a father. It left her confused, “as if I were an odd person.” She said the experience was partly responsible for her decision to study child psychology at Boston University, where she received a master’s degree.

The political activism that she learned at home, however, has been a thread that has lasted throughout her life and distinguished her among most spouses on Capitol Hill.

When she was a newlywed in 1970 and her husband was sent to Vietnam, she marched in the streets to protest “a government that I felt--we felt--was acting in an arrogant manner.”

And when she arrived in Washington in 1977 as the wife of a freshman congressman, Gore used her access to the halls of government to pursue her own set of issues. At an early seminar on being a political wife, Gore reportedly stood up and said: “Isn’t there more than going to teas here?”

Before her husband’s first term was over, she co-founded the Congressional Wives Task Force, which worked to publicize violence on television that was viewed by children.

“Her name is perfect for her--Tipper--because she does tip things around,” said Judy Scales, a family friend and executive director of the Mental Health Assn. in Nashville. “She’s willing to stand up and be counted and she does that very effectively.”

And she was willing to stand up several years ago with her music-labeling crusade.

In 1985, Gore listened to an album owned by her daughter and was “appalled” at the sexually suggestive lyrics. She found a sympathetic ear in a friend, Susan Baker, a mother of eight children and the wife of then-U.S. Treasury Secretary and current Secretary of State James A. Baker III. The two women co-founded the Parents Music Resource Center to advocate record warning labels.

Tipper Gore eventually became a leader of the issue, authoring a book in 1987 called “Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society” and also testifying before a congressional committee, of which her husband was a member. The hearing turned the issue into a spectacle when rock star Frank Zappa testified in opposition and described Gore as a “cultural terrorist.”

Gore said that she was not calling for censorship, only for a consumer information system somewhat similar to movie ratings. Her cause eventually helped persuade the music industry to adopt a voluntary labeling system that still exists.

For the last few years, Gore has focused her attention on children’s mental health issues. She is co-chairman with Ann Simpson--wife of Republican Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.)--of a National Mental Health Assn. interest group for children.

At home in Nashville, Tipper Gore also launched and now chairs an organization called Tennessee Voices for Children intended to promote home-based services for mentally ill children to reduce the need for institutionalization.

But despite her active life outside her home, friends say that Tipper Gore’s primary focus has been on her own four children--Karenna, Kristin, Sarah and Albert, ages 19 to 9.

Tipper Gore has also brought some of her outside work into the family by taking her children to do volunteer work at homeless shelters. She once said that she gave a homeless child one of her youngest son’s favorite toys--a stuffed Snoopy doll.

“My son didn’t necessarily want to give up his favorite toy but I’m trying to teach my children to be as outraged as I am at the very existence of homelessness and to take action,” Gore told a reporter for a Tennessee newspaper in 1989.

A few months later, the youngest son--Albert Gore III--was nearly killed when he was struck by a car as he and his father were leaving a baseball game. It took months, but the boy is fully recovered. And friends said that it was a painful experience for the family.

Albert’s injury was one of the reasons Sen. Gore decided not to run for President this year. It would have separated the family for much of the last 18 months and, instead, “they had a good year together,” one friend said.