THE FAMILY AND RELATIONSHIPS : The Juggling Act : Contented but sometimes anxious. Always overworked. Usually overwhelmed. Southern California families confront many concerns, a poll conducted for The Times shows. But somehow they make do. Here six families tell just how they manage.

Dan Willens, 37, has listened to a Harry Chapin song so many times as he bustles about Los Angeles, he sometimes hears its melancholy lyrics even when the radio’s not on.

The song is “Cat’s in the Cradle,” and it tells the story of a father who never has time for his son: “My son turned 10, just the other day; he said, ‘Thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let’s play. Can you teach me to throw?’ ”

But the father responds, “Not today, I’ve got a lot to do.”

By the song’s end, Willens explains, the boy has grown up without the father noticing; when the father calls, the boy is too busy with his own life to visit. So the father sings, “As I hung up the phone, it occured to me, he’d grown up just like me; my boy was just like me.”

“I worry about it,” says Willens, who lives with his wife, Ann, 36, and their 5- and 7-year-old sons in the Hollywood Hills. “I don’t want to miss out on their childhood. Not just for them--for myself.”

But to provide their children with the things they want for them--tennis lessons, Aikido lessons, art lessons and summer camp, for instance--Dan works 60- to 70-hour weeks in his law firm, and Ann works part time in the couple’s real estate development firm. They gross about $200,000 a year.

Their biggest expense, however, is the more than $11,000 in yearly tuition they will pay this academic year to the private Oaks School--a community-oriented cooperative effort.

“Children in public schools in Los Angeles tend to lose their innocence too soon,” Dan says. “They have to learn the realities of the world a little sooner than I’d like my child to learn them.”

Then there are the problems of overcrowded classes, low teacher morale and apparently declining academic standards, Ann says. “If we had less money, it would be obviously much harder. We would move to a place where we could send our kids to public school without worrying.”

Despite the urban pressures that seem constantly to threaten childhood innocence, the Willens believe Los Angeles is a good place to raise their children.

“They’re exposed to cultural experiences here that kids in other places aren’t,” Ann says. For instance, “there’s a symphony series at the Music Center that exposes them to the philharmonic at age 5. That’s really fabulous.”

But the time the family treasures most is time spent together, roughhousing in the evening or playing in the yard. “I prioritize my life so that I can give them as much time as possible . . .” Dan says. “I’m making time.”

The Cosios: ‘We Don’t Eat Junk Food!’

In Manila, a paid “helper” rode on the school bus with Robert and Aida Cosio’s children each day and stayed with them to make sure all went well. Two other helpers cared for the family’s youngest child, cleaned the house and prepared meals.

Yet the couple felt that opportunities for their children were limited in the Philippines. So three years ago, they immigrated to America. Now they live in Pomona, where they work daily to integrate a traditional emphasis on strong family ties and education with a culture that often seems to have other priorities.

Last October, the family bought a three-bedroom, two-bath home for $115,000 in an “average neighborhood.” Like all financial decisions, the purchase was made with the family in mind, Aida says.

Now they face the paradox of having to juggle their kids and their careers.

“My dream in life was to stay home and raise the kids,” Aida says. “I think it’s unrealistic now. I’m sorry for that.”

On a typical morning, the family of five rises about 6. Aida or Robert cooks breakfast (rice with fish or meat). The whole family sits at the kitchen table and says a Catholic prayer: “Thank thee our Lord for thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty . . . .”

After breakfast, Grace, 12, washes dishes. The two younger children, ages 6 and 8, sweep the floor, clean the stove, feed the cat.

Robert leaves for work at 7:30, driving to Fullerton in about 20 minutes. Aida checks the children’s uniforms, then drives them to St. Joseph parochial school at 8 a.m. Most days, Aida stays at school, volunteering to escort students on field trips or to watch them on the playground.

In the afternoon, she drives to her job as a psychiatric technician. At 4:30 or 5, Robert picks up the children at the school’s on-site day care center, where they have spent at least an hour completing homework.

At home, Robert and the children do simple chores and work together in the small back yard garden, where they raise eggplant, tomatoes, beans, peppers and other vegetables. Then Robert cooks a dinner that Aida helped prepare earlier. After another prayer, he and the children dine together.

“We don’t eat junk food. Never. Never!” Aida says. “Food is an important factor in raising a good intelligent mind.”

When Aida gets home from work at 11:25, she first checks the children in bed, then looks over their school work, which they nightly spread on a table for inspection. So far, their diligence seems to work; Grace is on her school’s honor roll.

The Cosios have been lucky, they believe, in encountering American families who share their values. But they still worry about societal attitudes.

“Family ties,” Aida laments, “are not so strong here.”

The Russells: ‘I Can’t Afford to Buy It’

Fed up with a life of parrying pleas for Nintendo, Atari, ATVs (all-terrain vehicles) and $90 sneakers, Julie Russell wants out.

She wants out of Orange County, its pervasive materialism and pressures to keep up with the Joneses. She wants out of Midway City, where she and her husband, Ronnie, a fiberglass company foreman, found the only home they could afford 11 years ago and where they have raised their two sons, Erich, 12, and Jessie, 8.

Children’s attitudes have changed drastically since she was a girl growing up in Lancaster, said Russell, 34, who describes a more disciplined day: “You spoke when you were spoken to. There were very few times when we had to be told no. We never called an elder by their first name. In today’s world, there’s no respect for the ‘Mr.’ or ‘Mrs.’ or even a professional title.”

But for Russell, who knows that the price of a 24-ounce loaf of Roman Meal bread has jumped 60 cents since September, the biggest problem is “this materialistic thing. It’s an argument all the time: ‘I want. I want. I want. So-and-so has it.’ I say, ‘You don’t need it and I can’t afford to buy it. I don’t think it’s necessary and I think it’s stupid.’ ”

The most recent argument was over a pair of $90 sneakers: “They say, ‘Why not?’ The teacher is wearing them. Why can’t I have them?’ ”

Finally, they compromised on a $30 pair, which Erich would pay for by doing the dishes for a year, she said.

An untraditional homemaker, Russell works part time as an office manager to occupy herself and help with bills. Her husband, she said, does more than half the housework.

She was 22 when her first child was born. “When you’re a young mother, nobody knows better than you. You say, ‘I’m not going to raise my kids the way my parents raise me.’ God forbid you’d say no, or spank him. Our kids were going to have an opinion. We wouldn’t say, ‘Go sit in a corner.’

“At 6, you learn what a mistake you’ve made. When he’s 8, you say, ‘Whoa, wait a minute.’ We now live in a dictatorship and I am the dictator.”

For the children’s benefit, they thought they should move. Some place rural, open, less congested. An ideal spot, she thought, would be central Oregon, where, maybe, her children would choose to read.

They fixed up the house to sell. “When it came down to the numbers, we discovered we’d have to pay the government $27,000 in capital gains tax. Once you do that, you can’t afford to move.”

Then, too, “you can’t afford to support them because it’s in an economically depressed area. Then you both have to work and are not home with the kids. This is where the jobs are. You can’t afford to go anywhere else.”

Deragisches: ‘There’s So Much Work . . . ‘

Bob Deragisch looks around his Yorba Linda neighborhood and worries about the signs of compromise and expediency so common now to middle-class families like his own.

He sees parents dropping off toddlers and infants next door where a woman runs a day-care center. She tells him the children sometimes call her “mom.”

He sees young boys hanging out, drinking beer, in the yard of a single father. The father is gone, at work.

Deragisch wants to do things differently. He wants his wife, Debbie, to be at home before school and after school for the children, Jimmy, 8, and Rebecca, 6, and for her to be able to volunteer at school. He wants to afford vacations and dinners out. And he wants, unlike his own hard-working father, to enjoy his children and their childhood.

As a result, Deragisch, 33, schedules his life down to the minute, rising every day at 4 a.m. to accommodate his main job as a middle manager for Parker Hanifin in Irvine; duties as assistant soccer coach attending games and practices; skating, bowling or camping with Indian Guides and Princesses; the school site council meetings and church.

On top of it all, he runs his own business nights and weekends installing computers.

“A lot of the time, I’m extremely tired,” he said.

To live in Orange County where he grew up, he believes--like most people--that two incomes are necessary. “I happen to be the one that has the second.”

So far, he said his boss understands when he needs to take a few hours off. “But if I’m not here, the work builds up.” He’d like to visit his father who is 80 and extremely sick, but doesn’t want to keep taking time off. “If something happened with my kids, I wouldn’t be able to go. I would have used up the goodwill on something else. Plus there’s so much work.”

Deragisch believes in setting a good example for his children. He drinks alcohol at home only once or twice a year. If exhaustion makes him overreact to irritation, he will apologize in front of the rest of the family. He can recall each of the four times he has spanked his son, and has no regrets, although his parents never spanked him as a child.

But like most working fathers, he feels guilty that perhaps he’s not home enough. “I don’t do enough around the house. Working is my excuse. I try to spend time with them, go out to dinner once a week to give my wife a break.”

He doesn’t play the lottery, but dreams about winning often enough to know what he would do. First, he would finance a Catholic grammar school close to his home so that his children could attend, and, he hopes, build a foundation that would help them ward off peer pressure.

And, rather than staying home, he would go back to school to finish college and become what he had always wanted to be, a teacher.

In real life, he takes his pleasure from the everyday gems of family living: sharing the joys of his daughter’s first words read aloud, tucking his son in, making sure the night light is on and the curtains closed.

Afterwards, he and Debbie sit on the couch and “vegetate for an hour and half” before going to bed. Then he tries to get enough rest to face another working day.

Gutierrezes: Staying on Top of Things

Worry is the age-old burden of moms and dads everywhere. But in Greater Los Angeles circa 1990, the level of parental angst is rising faster than gas prices.

On the way back from a day at the beach recently, Yvette and Patty Gutierrez and the older cousin who was driving stopped for a pizza. The Gutierrez girls, 14 and 12, called their San Gabriel home to say they would be late. But their parents were out for a walk.

Now, facing “a lifetime restriction” from going anywhere with that cousin, the girls wish they had tried calling home again.

Juan Gutierrez’s anxiety surged the moment his daughters failed to return at the agreed time. Two hours later, his imagination began to flash images inspired by the nightly news.

“Crime . . . gangs . . . accidents . . . things go through your mind,” he said. “It’s a lot of work being a parent. I paid the price that night because I was so worried. When they came home, they paid the price” with a strict restriction from going anywhere with their older cousin.

A refrigeration mechanic, Gutierrez moved to the United States from Mazatlan, Mexico, in 1959. His wife, Olga, a secretary for the school district, grew up in East Los Angeles and Venice. Both believe they are providing their three children with a better life than they had as kids. But both also feel that having a family compounds the multitude of problems of living in Southern California.

Because he gets off work at 3 p.m., Gutierrez shares the endless duties of loading the kids into the family Buick and hauling them to the doctor and the orthodontist. He takes his son, Hector, 16, to soccer practice and the daughters to softball, volleyball, piano lessons and baton twirling competitions.

Even an urban headache as seemingly disconnected to family concerns as traffic can trigger logistic logjams when five people are involved, Olga Gutierrez says.

But she and her husband endure such obstacles as part of their Sisyphsian struggle to keep their children on the right road to adulthood.

“If you want to help them grow you’ve got to stay on top of things,” Gutierrez says. “You’ve got to be careful who they’re with, what they watch, who their friends are. My wife and I put a lot of time into that. You can’t slack off on anything.”

As it is, all three children are doing well in school. Although they have witnessed gang fights at school carnivals, their children do not know any gang members and none have been asked to use drugs, they say.

But the pressures on youth today are relentless, Olga Gutierrez says. “At my son’s school, within one year, two kids his age committed suicide. For him to see that in his lifetime is quite traumatic. You know there is something wrong that is causing this . . . Maybe we get too involved in giving our kids material things, when what they really want is our time.”

Castors: ‘Thank God for Credit Cards’

Susan Castor’s year-long separation from her husband has been friendly. But as she quickly found out, life for a single mother in Los Angeles is often less so.

“Thank God for credit cards,” she says.

Even with with support from her husband who cares for the children two weeks a month, Castor finds herself going into debt. “You have to have a well-maintained car to survive in this city. You have to have a home, and housing is so high.

“You have to keep things simple when you’re a single parent raising children,” she has discovered. “You have to put aside all the ‘I wants’--the new fashions, makeup, toys--and get the basic necessities: Food, clothing, transportation to school.”

And when unexpected needs arise, like the new beds she recently bought for her children, Castor has little choice but to pull out the plastic.

“It’s difficult. I try to look at things as being temporary. My children are not always going to be small . . . There will be time for me at some point to pursue my career.”

Even as it is, though, she feels fortunate to have time with her children as well as a job that pays the bills.

As a “movement teacher” for preschoolers at Glendale YMCA, she sees the spectrum of parents.

“I see some parents who don’t have the money at all. Other parents have plenty of money and their nanny brings the kids--but those kids suffer, too, because they don’t have a mother or dad with them, they’ve got ‘Nanny.’ ”

Soon after separating, Castor moved in with Marya Metivier, a friend who is also a single mother with two children. Metivier needed help paying the rent on her large four-bedroom apartment in the Fairfax District. Castor needed emotional support.

“It worked out real well,” Castor says. “My oldest son is 11. My daughter is 5. Her oldest son is 10 and her youngest is 5. The kids are good friends.”

Eventually, though, the families felt a need for more privacy; last weekend, Castor and her family found an apartment and began to face life in Los Angeles on their own.

“When I first separated, I took my youngest child and moved to Fiji,” Castor said. “Fiji is beautiful, inexpensive, not polluted. But I found the problems were still with me. I found that my unhappiness was in me, not in a city. I found I couldn’t run away.

“So I came back. Los Angeles is a nasty, dirty, expensive, violent city. But there are lots of opportunities here--opportunities for better education and career opportunities available to my children as they get older.

“There are a lot of problems to be fixed. But I think if people keep working we can solve the problems. Los Angeles has the potential to be a nice city. You can’t give up. I guess that’s why I stay.”