Southern California Job Market : FITTING IN FAMILY : LOOKING OUT FOR SINGLE PARENTS

Juggling 8-hour-a-day jobs and 24-hour-a-day children can be tough enough in two-parent families, but for single mothers and fathers, the task can be doubly difficult.

First, there are the basic logistics of life without a co-chauffeur: single-handedly depositing Child A at Location X and Child B at Location Y, with minutes to spare to get to Workplace Z on time.

That miraculous act is plenty complicated even without complications. Throw a wrench in the process--a sick child, a must-see school play--and all semblance of order can come tumbling down.

Often, a single parent has no one to fall back on during the continual little crises of child-rearing.

Junior caught the measles? The baby-sitter up and quit? When Mom has no husband with whom to take turns staying home, she alone must solve the problem.

Single parents make up a sizable portion of today’s work force. According to 1988 U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, 5.5 million of the 120 million American employees support single-parent households. And as the divorce rate climbs, so too will that figure.

What, then, are employers doing to alleviate the plight of parents without partners?

On the whole, not much. Perhaps the question should be what could employers be doing?

“The situation is now so common--there are so many people, mostly women, facing this dilemma--that corporate policies concerning child care are long in coming,” said Myra Strober, an economist at Stanford University and author of the book, “Feminism, Children and the New Families.”

On-site day-care centers, of course, are a boon to any employee with young children. But barring that still-rare phenomenon, companies could offer less ambitious options such as flexible working hours and part-time positions.

However, Strober pointed out, however, that “frequently, the need for income is so great for single parents that they can’t take advantage of part-time work.”

Strober suggested that companies consider supplying baby-sitters to the parents of sick children. “It could be worth the company’s while to spend $40 on sending someone to the employee’s home rather than having a valuable employee sit home with sick children,” she said.

“Most companies just aren’t paying much attention to making flex-time and child-care policies work,” said D. Quinn Mills, a professor at Harvard Business School. “They could have and should have done a lot more on this years ago.”

Singling out single parents in company policies “might be discriminatory,” said Gloria Allred, a Los Angeles attorney who champions feminist causes. Still, she said, “In the long run, it would befit companies to further their flex-time and child care opportunities for all employees.”

Faith Popcorn, chairman of Brain Reserve Inc., a marketing consulting firm that specializes in predicting trends, said many parents have given up waiting for “slow-moving corporate America” to make room for children and have taken the situation into their own hands.

“We call the trend ‘cashing out,’ ” Popcorn said. “Last year, 400,000 people left the work force and opened their own businesses--in part so that they can take care of their kids in their own way. They can leverage their time, bring (children) to work with them, whatever they want.”

Indeed, employers lose good employees because of inadequate child-care provisions, said Thomas Lasswell, professor of sociology at USC.

“Studies show that the more companies pay attention to employee relations, the less turnover they have,” Lasswell said. “And one of the most expensive things to do personnel-wise is spend six months breaking in a new employee--and then have her quit because her employer doesn’t have decent maternity and child-care policies.”

The powers that be at Patagonia Inc. practice what Lasswell preaches. “Someone (new) is not a productive member of a team for a good six months to a year,” said Pam Murphy, vice president of Human Resources at the Ventura-based sports clothing manufacturing company. “It would be very expensive to recruit and hire a new employee every time we lost someone because we didn’t provide a day-care center.”

Not only does the company offer its 400 Southern California employees on-site day care for toddlers, it also has an after-school program that includes transportation.

Furthermore, employees can use their vacation time in one-hour increments, if they wish, to attend school programs or Little League games. And the boss understands when an employee must take a sick day to stay home with a sick child.

It was Murphy, a single mother, who organized the day-care facility shortly after she started working at Patagonia seven years ago.

“I was newly divorced and well aware of the needs of single parents,” she said. “The owners (husband and wife Yvon and Malinda Chouinard), who know what it’s like to be working parents, already had been thinking about a day-care center.”

Before the day-care center got off the ground, Murphy said, “It was horrible wondering what I would do with my children. I made arrangements for them in a private home, but sometimes the logistics were a nightmare. So to have my children in a program that was three seconds down the staircase made my life a lot easier and more secure.”

Patagonia subsidizes its nonprofit day-care center, which costs employees about $300 a month for each child. For $200 a month, parents can have a child picked up from school and delivered to the on-site “Kids’ Club” program.

During breaks, employees bring their children up to their offices, and youngsters roam the hallways with their parents. “Children are most welcome here,” Murphy said.

Mary Carman, 23, is one of the many single mothers at Patagonia. “I couldn’t ask for anything better,” said Carman, who has a 2-year-old son, Karch. “It’s so great to have him right here if he needs me for any reason. On my lunch break, I take him up to my office and show him off to my co-workers. He’s a popular guy.”

As a single person, “You don’t have anybody else to depend on when your child gets sick,” said Carman, who works in dealer services.

“I have a wonderful family, but I wouldn’t burden them with: ‘Would you watch Karch for the next two weeks? He has the chicken pox.’ They (Patagonia supervisors) have been more than understanding when I’ve had to use my sick time because Karch is sick.”

Patagonia also has a few single dads with children enrolled at its day-care center. Martin Wedemeyer, 29, has three little ones in the program.

“You feel so comfortable knowing your kids are nearby,” said Wedemeyer, who has worked for one year in Patagonia’s distribution center. “Before, when I had to leave them with a baby-sitter, I constantly worried: ‘What if she turns her back for a minute while they’re climbing on a picnic table?’

“Also, my kids were on different schedules. For a parent working 8 to 5, arranging for three children to be dropped off and picked up at three different places was incredibly difficult. I didn’t have anyone who sat around the house with nothing better to do than drive kids around.

“You can’t believe the peace of mind in knowing that a van will pick your kids up after school, that they’re wearing their seat belts and being safely driven to your workplace, and that they’ll be watched until you get off work,” Wedemeyer said.