WORKING FAMILY JUGGLES CHORES; TWO INCOMES OFFER MORE ADVANTAGES

When her first daughter Katie was born five years ago, Kathy Wolz was back at work three weeks later. That part of Jay and Kathy Wolz eight-year marriage resumed at normal speed. It was just everything else that changed.

He was a media professional, she was an attorney. There was a mortgage on a nice house in the western part of Cape Girardeau. Two car payments. Law school loans. But still money left over for day care.

Neither considered staying home with their child instead of working. "You become accustomed to a certain lifestyle," Jay says.

Even though that lifestyle no longer had much room for vacations or eating out or working out at the gym. "You feel when you're not at work you need to spend time with the kids," Kathy says.

When another daughter, Allison, came along 6 months ago, the tab for child care shot up to $600 per month, more than their mortgage payment. One more child, Jay and Kathy say, and they'd have to re-evaluate whether two careers still add up.

The Wolzes, both in their 30s, are members of an American generation that has championed the two-career family. Waiting to start a family until they were established in their careers is one of the values some of these families hold to.

"We waited eight years before the first one, thinking we could better handle it emotionally and financially," Jay says. But both conclude that there's really no preparing oneself for the demands of parenting.

Theirs is the juggling Wolz family. The children must be taken to and picked up from different day care facilities because only four licensed day care providers in the city accept infants, Kathy says. Katie goes to kindergarten in the mornings.

After school, Kathy helps out with Katie's Girl Scout troop.

Both Kathy and Jay were brought up in traditional families in which their fathers were the wage-earners and their mothers mostly stayed home to raise the children.

Though they haven't chosen it, they still value that ideal. "It was hard after growing up with those traditional values to realize you can't meet the same test," Kathy said.

There are many downsides to maintaining the two-career family, Jay and Kathy acknowledge.

"You recognize you miss an awful lot if you're at work all day," she says.

While at home, she worries about giving work her all.

"I have guilt at home and I have guilt at work."

Having children "may have cost me in terms of my career," Kathy says. She has changed law firms a few times and says, "You have to be flexible."

Her current employers, Richey, Rice, Spaeth, Heisserer and Summers, "have true family values," she says.

"If I have to be home with the kids or go to the doctor they don't give me any static about it."

And Jay's employer, St. Francis Hospital, has a handy day care program for employees whose children are sick. He is assistant director of public relations.

There are also two-career payoffs, especially in a recession. "Right now, it's kind of good to have two paychecks," Jay says.

Since Kathy is the major breadwinner, it's hard for either of them to imagine her staying home to raise the kids. She's not inclined to anyway.

"I wouldn't not want to work,' Kathy says. "...And I wouldn't not want to have kids."

She's glad to see the presidential election campaign focus on the family. Unfortunately for the Republicans, who raised the family values issue, it's the Democratic programs for day care, parental leave and health care that are most attractive to Jay and Kathy.

"The day care situation in this family is just absurd," she says. "I look at us and wonder how people working for minimum wage get by."

But, she says, "Regardless of how much money you have, the pull you feel when you try to balance family and career is the same."

Katie for one wishes her mother would not work. "I want mommy home," she says.

For now, that's just wishful thinking.

"When we started doing it, we didn't realize we'd want to stay home," Jay says. "If we had known then what we know now we might have been a one-paycheck family."