FAMILIES : Denmark : Social Benefits Make Home a Cozy Place : The Andersens enjoy a comfortable income and a system that eases the load on working women.

Harried working parents trying to find ways of blending their vision of a traditional, fulfilling family life with the economic realities of the 1990s would do well to study the Andersen family, which lives in this quiet suburb southeast of Copenhagen.

Here, safe in the bosom of a family-friendly national economic system--one that manages to combine elements of capitalism and socialism without ending up with the worst of each--the Andersen family insists that one can, in the yuppie phrase, really “have it all.”

“I don’t think we have any goals at the moment,” says Arne Andersen, who at 31 seems to have realized the elusive American dream of having a cozy house in the suburbs, an interesting working spouse, a healthy child and enough time left over at the end of the day for jogging and sports. “We have achieved what we want.”

“I agree with that, although I have a goal for when I am old,” adds his wife, Hanne Petersen, 41. “If I’m still fit for the fight, I want to see a lot of the world, and I want to study philosophy.”

The secret of their familial success seems to be, in part, a willingness to give up some of the ambitions that drove them when they were younger--they sat back and let someone else get the next promotion, buy the bigger car or move into a more prestigious house.

“I think a lot of people use up too much energy moving on,” says Petersen. “I think you should just stop and be happy.”

But another key element of is, unquestionably, to live in a country that considers it a matter of national pride to help working women.

More than anywhere else in the Western world, the Nordic countries have created state-led systems in which women are able both to hold jobs and to raise children without stretching themselves to the breaking point. Ninety-two percent of Danish women with children younger than 6 work outside the home, according to the Ministry of Social Affairs, and the Danish Folketing, or Parliament, is officially committed to making their work lives compatible with their family status.

As a result, state-run day care has blossomed in Denmark since 1970. More than half of all children under 3 are enrolled, which the Social Affairs Ministry calls the highest rate of participation in Europe. When children turn 7, they can go to part-time care centers after school.

Denmark has also made generous maternity leaves an institution: seven months at full salary, or even longer at lower pay, with fathers allowed to take up to 2 1/2 months if they wish. (In practice, few do.)

None of this is to say that Denmark is a land of perfect gender equality, for it is nearly impossible to find women sitting on corporate boards.

But for a mother who wants to hold a “normal” job, and still have the energy to bake bread with her family on the weekends--as Hanne Petersen was doing on a recent Sunday--Denmark seems hard to beat.

Andersen has been working for the past 10 years running the administrative side of a repair garage for the Danish subsidiary of Citroen, the French auto maker. Though many young Danish professionals change companies every five years or so, he says, he is content to stay where he is because he likes his colleagues.

In addition, he says, Citroen offers him flexible hours, so that he can work late one day if he wants and take off early the next. This allows him the time to run his usual 20 miles per week, play badminton at a local sports club and get supper on the table every night for the family in their single-story, red brick house, small by American standards but attractive and cozy.

Petersen, meanwhile, teaches 23 hours per week at a folkeskole , or public school, leaving at 2 or 3 p.m. each day to pick up the couple’s 2-year-old adopted daughter, Laerke, at her day-care center.

With the rest of the afternoon and evening free for child care, household chores, shopping and a small amount of teaching paperwork, Petersen has solved a problem that has emerged in Denmark as one of the top issues for working women: How parents can get the standard Danish workweek down from 37 hours to just 30, so that there is time left for the family.

“I can’t imagine having to work until 4 or 5 in the evening,” she says.

Between them, Andersen and Petersen have a gross income of about $87,000 per year and pay about $31,600 in income taxes. They also hand over 25% of the value of every consumer purchase they make, in the form of a national value-added tax. They generally feel that the national level of taxation is about right.

“You have to remember, we pay half our salary to the state, but we get it back somehow,” says Andersen. In the Andersen family’s case, there was free health care when Laerke arrived from India and infected the whole family with a mysterious fever, and there is the government’s quarterly child-subsidy payment: a check in the mail for $460.

With her advanced degree in psychology, Petersen was working at three different jobs before the couple adoped Laerke: her current one at the folkeskole , plus a job teaching at an enrichment school for teen-agers and still another taking complaints from psychiatric patients unhappy with their care.

She quit the last two jobs so that she would have more time for Laerke, and while she says she misses the professional stimulation and the money the other jobs offered, she isn’t willing to take time away from her long-awaited daughter.

The couple report that their biggest problem in the past year was finding a day-care slot for Laerke when Petersen’s adoption leave was up.

Despite the explosion in state-created day-care centers in Denmark, there are still not enough places for all children--any more than there are enough out-patient centers for all psychiatric patients, Petersen says, or enough surgical suites for everybody who wants an elective operation. Waiting lists here are long. New Danish parents typically sign up for day care when their children are born, only to discover there is nothing available when it is time to return to work.

“There is no guarantee that there will be a place for your child,” says Andersen. “I think that’s bad.”

Many Danish mothers thus end up either extending their maternity leaves at a lower benefit level, or else shopping the want ads for a dagplejemoder --an older woman who provides day care for children in her home.

But Andersen and Petersen decided not to take no for an answer. They told the social office that, since Laerke had already been in two orphanages back in India, she shouldn’t be bounced around now. The argument worked, and Laerke was bumped to the front of the line.

Andersen and Petersen are happy with the center and pleased that their gambit worked but see their experience as an unfortunate example of what’s wrong with the Danish social system: Benefits that should be equally available to all, they say, come first to those who figure out how to work the system.

“It’s all about knowing the system and using it right,” says Andersen.

Profile

* Husband: Arne Andersen, 31

* Wife: Hanne Petersen, 41

* Home: Small brick house in Kastrup, outside Copenhagen

* Father’s occupation: Administrator at auto company

* Mother’s occupation: Teacher

* Annual income: $87,000