Stay-at-Home Spouses May Face Financial Risks : Planning: Safeguards can ease effects of death of a wage-earner, divorce, or professional dormancy.

Despite the well-publicized flow of women into the job market, about 4 of every 10 mothers of children under age 6 do not work outside the home.

The 22 million American women who are currently non-wage-earning spouses face financial hazards their employed counterparts (and their husbands) don’t.

To some extent, those hazards--death, divorce and professional dormancy--can be overcome through family financial planning.

Other safeguards would take acts of Congress to fix.

Here are some financial considerations for families who have assigned one spouse (and yes, it’s almost always the woman) to stay home with the kids.

* Retirement planning. People who don’t earn wages don’t have access to retirement savings vehicles. No company pensions, no 401(k) plans, and practically speaking, no Individual Retirement Accounts. Wage earners can put up to $2,000 a year in deductible or non-deductible IRAs; non-wage earners are limited to $250. One possibility is for the stay-at-home spouse to make a point of earning $2,000 a year and then designating that total for an annual IRA contribution.

Another possibility (but don’t hold your breath) is for Congress to pass the “IRA Equity Act,” a bill that would give housewives and househusbands equal IRA access. Modern divorce theory holds that non-working spouses are entitled to share in the pension funds accumulated by their working spouses in the event of a divorce.

But practically speaking, this doesn’t always work out. In order to split the funds, couples often must remove them from their tax-deferred shelter, an event that frequently leaves the wife with a fraction of the real retirement spending power left in her husband’s account.

Couples serious about retirement-fund equality may find it worth buying an inexpensive tax-deferred annuity in the wife’s name to balance pension savings of the husband.

* Replacement value. An unemployed mother of a 2-year-old can expect to put in about $20,000 a year in household labor, according to Cornell University researchers W. Keith Bryant and Cathleen Zick. That includes the grunge portion of household work--cleaning, driving, baby-sitting, cooking and the like.

It doesn’t include the value added by a mother--serious homework help, summer camp selection and the like. How much would it really cost to replace all that a mother does if you were buying an insurance policy on her life? You’re looking at very close to half a million dollars, says Bryant.

Couples in which one spouse earns all the money ought to beef up their term coverage for both members during the period when the stay-at-home spouse is staying at home.

* Keeping a hand in. Today’s stay-at-home mother doesn’t look forward to a time when her kids are grown and she has time to clean out closets and can peaches. She looks forward to going back to work as soon as she’s done the bulk of her child rearing. To that end, she should keep a hand in her profession, even if it requires hiring child care assistance one morning a week to do so.

Lunches with former co-workers, subscriptions to trade magazines, classes in languages or accounting or desktop publishing, high-level volunteer organizing and temporary work assignments are all means to that end.