Priority Check : With the Clintons in Washington, this just might be the year of the family, howeveryou define it. Everyone from single mothers to ‘woopies’ (well-off older people), teen parentsto time-stressed working couples is expecting big gains on the issues that hit home.

For families, 1993 may finally be the year when talk translates to action.

Not that legions of strategists are walking around empty-headed, clinging to the illusion that the Clinton Administration will magically cure the ills of the American family.

These observers are realists. They know that if the mythical benevolent mother can’t “make it all better,” neither can a passel of politicians.

But the colossal miscalculation in 1992 by Republicans, who thought they could appropriate the term family values , gave new momentum to those who labor in the trenches on behalf of the ever-evolving cast of characters who make up the American household. Bill and Hillary Clinton’s expertise and steady track record on family issues have further boosted the hopes of people who had come to feel like a political postscript.

Interviews with dozens of experts around the country confirm that big strides are expected in health care, welfare and child care. Barbara Reisman, head of the Child Care Action Campaign, says she is encouraged by the President-elect’s “understanding of the connections between job growth and providing family support like child care.” She says the hopes of family activists soared during Clinton’s victory speech “when he turned to his daughter, Chelsea, and apologized for the amount of time he had spent away from her.”

Just to make sure that the new chief executive does not forget that moment, Reisman has sent Clinton a proposal calling for, among other things, a child-care summit that would be convened early this year.

School improvement, with school-based services such as parent education leading the list, will also be an issue. And teen parents can expect more attention than ever.

Lawyers in the family movement, noting that “mothers have never been much of a constituency before,” are optimistic that courts and legislatures will make family law a greater priority.

Family observers expect changes outside government as well. “It’s not just that the feds are going to come in and make our lives wonderful,” says Susan Nall Bales, a Washington, D.C., family advocate. “There’s a real renaissance at work, a recognition that people are going to have to wage this war at the community level.”

Trends predicted for 1993 include:

* A redefinition of the very notion of family to include what once were known as alternative living groups.

* Among this country’s wealthiest and poorest citizens--but not those in the middle--a trend toward larger families (three or more children). Although it seems illogical to have more children in uncertain economic times, large families offer a kind of anchor, experts say.

* Consolidation of groups that represent diverse--and in the past, often competitive--segments of the family movement. Members in the fledgling Coalition for America’s Children, for example, range from the American Assn. of Retired Persons to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

* Creative rabble-rousing on the part of the fastest-growing segment of the population, Americans over 50. For families, this means that grandparents’ rights will appear on more legislative agendas. Affordable, long-term care will also be a goal.

* New recognition of the consumer clout wielded by these same older Americans. “Woopies”--well-off older people--will be the latest target for advertisers.

* Community-based problem-solving. Philosophically, this approach lays responsibility for change in the hands of community residents, with local governments as vital but secondary partners. An illustration can be found in the 1993 report of the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, which stresses the role of neighborhood subgroups in reaching out to families “in an unofficial way.”

* New influence by the burgeoning “work/family” movement that will be countered by a mushrooming “work/life” movement. If work/family struggles to balance the demands of home and the workplace, the work/life forces reflect unmarried and childless workers saying “me too.” This year, they will insist in louder voices that a three-month maternity leave should be matched by the opportunity for time off to climb the Himalayas or repair the roof.

* A vociferous outcry against what Brad Googins, head of Boston University’s Center for Work and Family, calls “time famine.” This acute shortage of free time is the single biggest complaint of working families of all income levels.

Time Famine

Until now, says Fran Rodgers, president of Boston’s Work/Family Directions, the recession has made families so fearful of losing their jobs that “they haven’t really demanded much at the workplace.” In 1993, Rodgers projects, “you’re going to see the effects in the workplace of a lot of employees who feel battered.”

It’s unclear how this dissatisfaction among overstretched families will manifest itself. Even with rays of economic sunshine appearing on the horizon, American families feel queasy about their financial futures. The big question, Rodgers says, “is what will be the effect of having this many people feel this discouraged in a good economy.”

Experts say corporate restructuring will also figure into the confused psychological arena of American work and family. Googins, of Boston University, cites the case of a middle-aged man who was laid off from his position as chief financial officer of a medium-sized company. Months of unemployment meant that he could spend more time with his children, who lived nearby with their mother after their parents’ divorce.

Late in 1992, when the father was finally offered a good job that meant moving a thousand miles away, he balked. “Twenty years ago, that never would have happened,” Googins says.

As they yearn for more time at home, parents will bring enormous pressures for flexibility to the workplace. While “parents have been weak advocates for themselves” in the past, Rodgers says, this will change in 1993. “It’s genie-out-of-the-bottle time,” says Rodgers, who juggles a husband, two teen-agers and a demanding career.

Dana Friedman, co-president of the Families and Work Institute in New York City, has similar expectations. “There is no question in my mind but that there is going to be some boiling over or explosion of stress once this lean and mean period is over,” Friedman says. “People have pared down to the minimal level already.”

In what little time they do have, families also feel assaulted by an excess of choices and overwhelmed by technology that they once thought would liberate them. “What we’re going to be moving toward in 1993 is smart technology,” says Googins--”machines that reduce the number of options to a manageable few.”

‘90s Philanthropy

Yet, despite the time famine, many Americans manage to offer a portion of their meager free hours to volunteer work. The philanthropist of the ‘90s is in the trenches, working not on fashion shows but on tough issues such as teen parenting or family resources.

Mary B. Babson, president of the Assn. of Junior Leagues International, believes that 1993 will be “an unprecedented year for the community to participate in supporting families and individuals in trouble or vulnerable to family disintegration.”

In Houston, local Junior League president Jane Osborne echoes Babson’s thoughts. In surveys of her organization’s 4,000 members, Osborne says volunteers keep coming back to “family, family, family. It’s the heart and soul of everything we’re doing.”

Osborne says disintegration of the family unit will be the Houston Junior League’s newest focus, because “more and more people were saying, ‘OK, you’ve got all these different issues, but so much of it seems to stem from the fact that families are falling apart.’ ”

Family Law

All too often, the courtroom is where the consequences of family splintering show up. Joan Zorza, a senior attorney with the National Battered Women’s Law Project in New York City, says the effects have been particularly damaging--and dramatic--because family law has been neglected in recent years.

“Whenever legal services have cutbacks to make, the first they cut is family law,” Zorza says. “And the last to be reinstated is family law.”

But Zorza looks at 1993 with cautious optimism. “It certainly isn’t going to be a worse year,” she says dryly.

There will be “movement, if not actuality toward getting some national health coverage for children,” she says. “I think there also will be more aggressive moves toward collection of child support.”

Nancy Erickson, a staff attorney with the National Center of Women and Family Law, says some states are considering attaching professional license requirements to child support payments--a move that would have equal impact on deadbeat moms and dads in the ranks of law, medicine, architecture and plumbing. A number of states are looking into similar strictures on drivers’ licenses--as in, no child support, no license.

Child Abuse

Child-abuse professionals also are sanguine about the new year. Many of their expectations are pinned to the involvement of Hillary Clinton in children’s issues--and to the appointment of Ann Cone Donnely, executive director of the National Committee on Child Abuse, to the President-elect’s transition team.

One result could be a greater focus on prevention and early intervention, rather than on punishment, for offending parents, says Deanne Tilton Durfee, vice chair of the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect.

Durfee says she is confident that a strengthened economy will bring a reduction in child abuse. “The economy has created a lot of stress,” she says. “If the economy goes up, we are optimistic child abuse will go down. Stress creates all kinds of problems, including substance abuse, family violence and child abuse.”

Reproductive Rights

After what David J. Andrews, the acting president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, calls “12 years of repression,” family planners are equally hopeful about 1993. “ Contraception was a dirty word in the Reagan and Bush administrations,” Andrews says. “What I look for in 1993 is the promise that poor women and their families, along with women in general in this country, can look forward to freedom of information and freedom of speech.”

The first order of business, Andrews and other agree, is to ensure that President Clinton follows through on his campaign promise to lift restrictions on counseling for abortion clinics. Many state legislatures, meanwhile, will be wrestling with whether or how to restrict abortions.

The spectrum of family planning will be expanded in 1993 by a new “menu” of birth control devices--including female condoms and the injectable drug Depo Provera. The subcutaneous Norplant will be more widely available.

Men will be targeted with new birth control options as well. Specifically, they will be urged to use a new range of thinner polyurethane condoms.

Reality in the Media

Family issues will be the focus of various media in the coming year. In keeping with a trend toward realism, television shows are expected to continue depicting sexuality in a true-to-life fashion that addresses how to treat people with HIV, for example, as well as decisions about virginity and contraception. Advocates from the Center for Populations Options’ Media Project say parents should be prepared to use the new shows as springboards for discussions with children.

Mainstream publishing will look at mothers in a new light. Marly Rusoff, associate publisher at Doubleday, cited four novels coming out in early 1993 that feature women who abandon their families. What is new about these books, says Rusoff, is that the mothers are presented not as monsters, but as women who have confronted complicated life choices.

At Random House, vice president Carol Schneider points to her publishing house’s lead title for Mother’s Day as a strong example of a growing interest in such issues. “Family Values” by Phyllis Burke is not some tract about politics and morality. Subtitled “Two Moms and Their Son,” the book instead tells of a lesbian couple and their child born by donor insemination.

The timing could not be more fortuitous. Many Americans still cling to the coveted image of “what we would like to think of as the typical American family,” says Googins, of Boston University. “But the reality is that there are more and more different groupings that are not typical.”

In 1993, he says, “we are going to move more and more toward these different family arrangements.”

Times Staff Writer Lynn Smith contributed to this story.