SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CAREERS / PART-TIME CAREERS : Men Who Break Out of Mold Find New Dreams to Chase

The fraternity is a small one and hard to spot, for there are very few indicators that point toward membership in this intensely private, loosely linked band of very Merry Men.

They’re the ones with smaller paychecks and bigger smiles, aging Toyotas rather than new BMWs, freedom instead of frustration. They’re the men who buck convention and work part time-- because they want to.

Don Etter, 61, could head the Denver division of this cheerful crew, seeing as how he left a lucrative law practice 10 years ago to chase a dream of public service.

Three part-time jobs later--including the time he and wife, Carolyn, shared the top job at Denver’s Department of Recreation and Parks--and he wouldn’t go back to the daily grind if you paid him.

“I think people envy my ability to make the choice not to run full-time on the fast track,” Etter said. “I certainly feel very good about it.”

But he won’t divulge the names of his five male friends who also left the fast lane to work part time.

“I know what the general attitude toward part-time work is,” he said. It’s a negative one: “Somehow, someone who wants to work part time doesn’t have it. It’s pervasive. And there’s probably a gender thing about it.”

Which is why so few men work part time--even when they want to. Although precise statistics for part-time workers are hard to come by, the Assn. of Part-Time Professionals estimates that only 30% of the nearly 4.5 million professional part-time workers in American businesses are men. The group conjectures that 88% of those men work shortened hours out of choice, but notes that their numbers have not grown at the same pace as their female counterparts’.

“It’s primarily women who are seeking part-time employment,” said Maria Laqueur, executive director of the group and co-author of “Breaking Out of 9 to 5: How to Redesign Your Job to Fit You.”

“I would love to say that men are just dying to work part time,” said Linda Marks, director of the FlexGroup Project at New Ways to Work, a national organization that promotes workplace flexibility. “But most men culturally don’t even dare to ask for it. . . . People think (a woman) can’t be serious if she’s only working part time. It’s much worse for men.”

Women, she says, have the “excuse of children”--which is generally understood in the workplace, if not embraced. “Men only get away with it if they’re writing the Great American Novel,” she said.

The flip side of that unbalanced equation, however, gives an interesting insight into the men who do choose part-time employment--and we’re not talking about the snotty waiter-cum-director/actor/stunt man who spilled your pasta last night and made you apologize.

Laqueur breaks these purposeful part-timers of the male persuasion into two groups: The tiny percentage who leave the security of 40 hours a week to chip in with the family and the much larger group of men who retire early and still want ties with the working world.

Robert Foley, 57, will work until he dies. After 27 years with the federal government--stints with the Navy, the CIA and the Department of Justice--Foley took early retirement at the age of 49. He is currently on his second part-time job, working three days a week writing for the American Assn. of Retired Persons in the Washington area.

“I think you should work forever,” he said. “I like going into an office and using the organization’s equipment and getting a regular paycheck. . . . I could never work full time again.”

But, while Foley insists that he has not felt any cultural bias against his newly flexible work life, he can be a tad prickly when he talks about free time.

“Even during the periods where I haven’t had a salaried part-time job, I am legitimately busy at home. I’ve done some free-lance work,” he said. “I haven’t been doing the crossword puzzle and watching Oprah Winfrey. I feel just as behind in paperwork and personal business as I was when I worked full time.”

High on the list of Don Etter’s reasons for a pared-down work week is “more time to spend with my wife.” Etter’s non-traditional work life also has allowed him to leave law after 30 years and fulfill his dreams of public service.

He has worked in Denver government, written a National Register of Historic Places nomination for the city’s park system and a centennial history of the Denver Zoo. Two of those jobs were shared with his wife.

Only finally does Etter concede that part-time labor is a vehicle for easing into retirement.

“This is a way to slow down in some respects, but also maintain not only an income but an identity and the interest of a ‘job,’ ” he said. “Not only are you talking about a different way to work, but you’re talking about a different way to retire.”

“Terrible word, retire.”