‘90s FAMILY : HAVING IT ALL : Going into business with your spouse. Being your own boss. Rearranging work schedules to spend more time with the kids. Sound great? Well, take a deep breath--it’s not easy.

When Zack Jenkinson, 25, asked Laura Schlieter, 32, to marry him, he knew he’d someday want to share parent ing as well as business responsibilities with her. It was all part of a plan he devised when he immigrated to Southern California from Ireland six years ago.

Instead, the couple ran into near-disaster. Forced to leave behind a haircutting business they had launched, they practically quit speaking to each other and watched their life together begin to disintegrate. Eventually, with the help of their families, they were able to put together a new salon and rescue the rocky relationship, allowing them to continue among the growing number of Americans who have eschewed traditional work-family arrangements.

“We decided we’d rather lower our standard of living to spend more time with (daughter) Emma, than both work full-time. . . . And we’re making it. The rough part’s behind us,” Laura said.

Adding a twist to the “tag-team” and job-sharing strategies employed by growing numbers of parents since the mid-1980s, the Jenkinsons set up a business where rather than maximize profits, the bottom line is to maximize each parent’s time with the child.

Faith Wohl, director of Workplace Initiatives for the General Services Administration in Washington, cautions that the couple’s arrangement is not for everybody.

“What they are doing is a wonderful solution, but not yet broadly applicable,” she said. “Not everybody is in a business where they can do this. Nor is it a given that every couple has compatible work skills, or is willing to fully share the responsibilities at home.”

Wohl and her late husband brought up three children while running a small publishing company out of their suburban Pennsylvania home. Among the areas of contention, she said, was each spouse’s preference for spending more time with the children, leaving the less glamorous home tasks, such as cleaning and washing dishes, to the other.

Similarly, Bill and Janet McMurtrey, who began a computer hardware distribution company in their Westlake Village home, would often take off a couple of hours to shuttle their three children to the doctor or to a school football game.

“We always knew what the kids were doing. We were involved. When you have your own business, you can do that,” Janet said.

As 14-hour workdays became the norm, however, the McMurtreys’ involvement with their children declined. In time, the company put 10 more employees on the payroll and expanded to an office three miles away.

Eventually, the kids overdosed on the family business. “ ‘Let’s not talk about (the company) tonight,’ they’d say, and we respected that,” Janet said.

Despite the problems, however, one-quarter of all working fathers and nearly half of all working mothers said they would sacrifice career advancement for more time with the family, according to a recent survey by the New York-based Families and Work Institute. And corporate downsizing, coupled with an increasing number of entrepreneurial businesses, have resulted in an increasing--though still limited--number of spouses sharing job and parenting responsibilities, Wohl said.

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Soon after the Jenkinsons married, they quit their haircutting jobs to start their own salon. Although the newlyweds were short on money, the idea for a Santa Monica salon proved popular with friends, who staked them 80% of the start-up capital. Loans provided the rest of the money, and a dozen clients--from architects to real estate agents--chipped in their professional services in return for free haircuts.

Barely a year after the Santa Monica salon opened, business was booming. Laura and Zack each spent alternate days cutting hair and staying home with Emma, who is now 18 months.

“The clients switched off between us with no problem,” Zack said. “They seemed to get a kick out of it.” But an increasing client load caused business pressures to grow, and the couple came to feel like hostages.

As the issue simmered for six months, communication between spouses suffered, as did their sex life.

“We became business partners who were living together. Life went from rough to unbearable,” Zack said.

Moral support came, unexpectedly, from their families. Zack’s father, a 50-year-old stained-glass artisan, told him in a series of overseas calls how much he regretted missing his older sons’ childhoods. He advised Zack to do whatever it took to make a go of the marriage.

The Jenkinsons quit their hair salon in June, and his parents flew over. Staying with the couple for three weeks, they baby-sat Emma and helped redirect the couple’s energies back to their dream: a new salon--but one they would control.

Finally, in October, Sit Still staged a grand-opening party.

Laura’s father, who had little time for her as a child, started coming up from Orange County twice a week to see his blue-eyed granddaughter. Laura’s parents also began baby-sitting Emma on Saturdays, allowing the couple to work together one day a week at the salon.

The Jenkinsons squeezed in more time together by selling Laura’s car and shuttling each other to the salon in Zack’s car, with Emma along for the ride.

Only when Sit Still began breaking even in December, the couple said, were they finally able to spend a cozy evening together on the living room couch.

“We had been barely brushing by each other’s shoulders. That night, we rented a movie. On that couch, we started cuddling,” Zack recalled.

As the film played, they started talking about themselves. Soon after, their physical intimacy returned.

“We’re starting to know one another again,” Zack said. “Even if something happened at Sit Still and we had to open another business, we now know we could do it.

“And (we’re both) watching Emma grow up, being there for her. That’s really what it’s all about.”