ILWAUKEE - Two children, two incomes, two shifts: The Gladneys are the middle-class, working family the presidential candidates promise to protect. But to Nichole, a marketing coordinator, and Fredrick, a deputy sheriff, their reality - a stressful, daily juggling of demanding jobs and overtime, children's harried schedules, and marriage-by-cell phone - is missing from the season's political rhetoric.
''My issues are work and family and policies to make sure the nuclear family stays intact,'' said Nichole Gladney, 30, adding that her husband's 2-to-10 p.m. shift and inflexible schedule make her feel like ''a single parent with an extra paycheck.''
''I don't hear much in the campaign about child care or encouraging employers to be family-friendly,'' she said.
Nor do the specialists on such matters. ''Neither candidate is seriously addressing the fact that the sustained economic expansion had made things worse in terms of work and family,'' said Joel Rogers, a University of Wisconsin political scientist and author of ''America's Forgotten Majority: Why the White Working Class Still Matters.''
''The candidates talk about tax cuts and tax credits,'' Rogers said. ''What people really want is more time and relief from the pressures at work.''
Particularly women. Surveys consistently show that women are less sanguine than men about the nation's robust economy. Like Nichole Gladney, working mothers say they are grateful it is producing jobs with decent pay and benefits, but it comes at a cost. Many feel that with longer hours, mandatory overtime, and office technology that can follow them home, their lives are spinning out of control, with never enough time for good parenting and satisfying marriages.
This anxiety was palpable when a group of working women came together last week in Milwaukee to talk about their families, their choices, and what they would like to hear from George W. Bush and Al Gore. The round table was organized by 9to5, a national, nonpartisan group that advocates an improved workplace for women, including equal pay, expanded family leave, and a higher minimum wage.
Dana Swan, 32, a single mother with a 12-year-old boy, lives with her parents and works the overnight shift at a Milwaukee factory that manufactures auto dipsticks. She hates the hours because she is always tired, and she isn't pleased that her employer requires her to work overtime every other Saturday.
But the job provides Swan with health insurance, a retirement plan, and the freedom to be home in the afternoon and evening with her son, Joshua.
''Financially, I'm barely making it,'' Swan said. ''But I am blessed because my parents are with my son at night, and I can spend quality time with him before I go to work.''
Swan said she would like to hear the candidates talk about universal health insurance and better quality child care.
Wendy Pologe, 45, is raising an 11-year-old son, Daniel, with her domestic partner, who works a 4-to-midnight shift. After 11 years with the Milwaukee public schools, Pologe quit to take a part-time day job as a bank teller at half the pay and none of the benefits so she could be home after school.
''I am the glue that holds our family together,'' said Pologe, who says that the most critical national issue is getting employers to provide benefits to the partners of gays and lesbians. ''The candidates seem super-afraid to make a commitment to that,'' she said.
Christel Wendelberger, 34, knows about being the glue. After her first child was born, she quit her job and started her own consulting business, a risk she could take because her husband works as a carpenter for a construction company and had the ''`safety net'' of health insurance and steady pay. Even with a flexible job, she is overwhelmed by the additional demands now that her daughter, Luisa, is in school.
''It would be nice to see employers be a little bit more respectful of men's families,'' Wendelberger said. ''It shouldn't always have to be the wife's responsibility.''
In 1993, President Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act, which requires large employers to give 12-week, unpaid leaves to workers to care for newborn children or family members who are ill. President Bush vetoed the measure twice. George W. Bush says he supports the law but would not allow states to use unemployment insurance funds to pay for leaves, as the Clinton administration did this summer.
Gore has said he favors paid leaves and making them available from smaller employers. At a rally in downtown Milwaukee Thursday, he pledged to expand the act.
Ellen Bravo, president of 9to5, said she is surprised and disappointed that neither candidate has made workplace issues a top priority. ''If they really care about working families, why aren't they talking all the time about child care, ending mandatory overtime, and expanding family leave?'' she said.
Family leave is an important issue for the Gladneys. When Nichole was injured in a car accident and hospitalized, Fredrick's supervisor initially turned down his request to take the day off. ''If Fred needs to leave work, it gets written up in his file,'' Nichole said. ''I said, `What do the women who work there do?' My husband said, `They don't last.'''
The Gladneys work different shifts, a fact of working life that is both increasingly common and disruptive to marital stability. According to Harriet Presser, director of research at the University of Maryland's Center on Population, Gender, and Social Inequality, 31 percent of all two-earner couples with children under age 14 work split shifts, and 57 percent of two-earner couples work nonstandard schedules - that is, at least one spouse works weekends or nights.
Presser's data also show that the divorce rate after five years of marriage is six times higher for men who work nights than for those who work days, and three times higher for women who work at night.
''I think the presidential candidates do need to do more than promise families money or child care,'' Presser said.
Tracy Jones, 33, wants to hear the candidates talk about enforcing the law on equal pay. The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently ruled that she was discriminated against when a furniture-distribution firm paid her $1 an hour less than the men doing the same job.
Jones recently started working as a receptionist at a law firm, a job she calls ''great'' because the hours are regular and she can get home shortly after her 13-year-old son, Qyndale.
Peggy Lewis listened while the working women exchanged stories. A 59-year-old retired teacher from Sheboygan, she is deep in ''uncharted waters,'' she said, simultaneously babysitting her grandchild and caring for her elderly father. She wants to know what the next president will do about long-term care for seniors.
''There are hard issues where people have strong opinions, and I'm not surprised the candidates gloss over them,'' Lewis said. ''It's not about working families. It's about families that work.''
