SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CAREERS / BALANCING WORK AND FAMILY : Tag-Team Parenting : With more companies offering flexible work schedules, couples are finding it easier than ever to earn a living and still be a stay-at-home mom or dad

Shelly Reshes and Mike Arata play tag to solve their day-care dilemma: He cares for their 3 1/2-year-old son while she works mornings, then she takes over while he works in an after-school program.

“We knew we didn’t want a child-care situation,” Reshes said. “We wanted to raise our own child and instill our values.”

The increasing acceptance of flexible work schedules gives many parents the freedom to work at home, or part-time, to minimize the hours their children spend in day-care. A Conference Board survey this year found that “contingent workers” made up one-tenth of the work force in 21% of the 91 major companies responding. That was nearly double the percentage that the independent research group found in 1990.

Families who adopt a tag-team schedule believe that, just as both parents must contribute income to keep the household going, both also must devote time to their children.

“As good as some child-care situations can be, there’s no real substitute for a loving parent,” said Robert Maurer, a clinical psychologist at Santa Monica Hospital who sees the benefit of the tag-team approach.

“Having the child see the parents cooperating and collaborating with each other gives the child a better chance at success in his-her own life,” Maurer says.

Parents who share child-care and work responsibilities say they want to be the ones who set the child’s daily schedule, read to them and handle the chores. Even more important, these parents are determined to show their children what they value in life. As one said, “We didn’t have kids for someone else to raise.”

How does the tag-team approach work, financially and logistically? For Reshes and Arata of Lemon Grove, Calif., two part-time jobs in the San Diego Unified School District add up to a full-time beginning teacher’s salary, with benefits.

Arata and Reshes drive decade-old cars, but they do make a monthly contribution to a college fund for their son, Eli. They say their situation is temporary, until Eli is in first grade. By then, Arata expects to have a full-time teaching position.

Here’s how their workday goes: Reshes gets to her kindergarten class about 7:30 a.m., and school is in session from 8 a.m. to noon. She gets home about 12:45 p.m., then Arata leaves for work at 1:30.

The result: Eli is with one or both parents 24 hours a day.

“I had heard from friends how quickly the childhood years go by,” Reshes, 38, said, “so it was important for me to be there during these crucial years.”

Arata runs a tutoring and community arts program at a public middle school in San Diego. During their mornings together, he and Eli sometimes run errands or drop by the program’s office. Arata says his boss’ support for his child-care arrangement has made it that much easier for the family to try tag-team parenting.

Pam and Steve Alexander of Irvine are also committed to sharing care of their 16-month-old son, Joseph. She is a nurse at UCI Medical Center in Orange and Steve is a graduate student and instructor

of mathematics at Cal State Fullerton. They adjust their schedules every semester, depending on Steve’s class hours.

Pam Alexander, 41, works three 12-hour shifts a week in the intensive care unit at the hospital. Her nursing education and her religious values convinced her that tag-team parenting was right for her family.

“Doctors say that kids are pretty much developed emotionally by age 5--their sense of security, the way they respond, the way they’re going to parent their own children,” she said. “We just want our child to have our values and be watching how we interact as a family.”

Her 16-year-old daughter was in day-care as a toddler because Alexander was single, in nursing school and had no choice. That was a bad experience, she said, “so, when Joey was due, we decided to set up something else.”

Both couples’ tag-team approach to raising their children is a rejection of traditional roles and society’s expectations. Their decision is supported by child-rearing expert Penelope Leach, whose 1994 book, “Children First,” argues strongly against Western society’s matter-of-fact acceptance of day-care.

In a Times interview last year, Leach criticized the lack of alternatives to child-care and the pressure on women to return to work when they instead want to spend more time with their babies.

Paid day-care remains a necessity for most two-income families, however. But flexible schedules can help families cut down on the time their children spend in child-care.

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For example, Rene and John Fox of Lake Forest have relied on day-care since their oldest son was 6 weeks old. But a schedule change will allow Rene to cut her sons’ day-care to three days a week: She will work Tuesday through Thursday at Huntington Beach Medical Center, where she is director of marketing and public relations. Friday and Monday, she’ll be working at home.

“Kids in California grow up way too fast,” Rene Fox said, “and they need more supervision than children in maybe another part of the U.S.” Her new schedule will let her provide more of that supervision for 7-year-old Jacob and 4-year-old Colton.

Besides, as Steve Alexander said, “I can’t imagine anybody saying when they die, ‘I spent too much time with my kids.’ ”