June 23, 1983

''IT'S not easy to raise children and work at the same time,'' Stephen Segal told the 19 Bankers Trust employees assembled in a conference room in the company's Park Avenue skyscraper. ''If you're a man,'' he said, looking at one of the four men in the room, ''the chances are that your father was not as closely involved in parenting as you. And if you're a woman the chances are your mother didn't work in the way you are. I think it's helpful to think of yourselves as pioneers.''

If I were asked to define the difference between house restoration and renovation,'' Dr. Theodore Lindauer says, ''I would say $100,000.'' Dr. Lindauer, a Los Angeles psychiatrist, knows the distinction well. He recently completed six years of work restoring the Edwards House, an International style classic in the Los Angeles hills designed by the California architect Gregory Ain. The house was called the year's best by the national architectural press in 1936 and is one of the few modernist houses to be restored in the United States. Although Dr. Lindauer had access to original drawings, and the help of the retired architect himself - who had chanced by one day on a semiannual bicycle tour of his old buildings - the task for Dr. Lindauer was long and expensive. As an old modernist building, the Edwards House also presented certain restoration difficulties different from those of 19th-, 18thor 17th-century houses. Restoring houses to a particular period may seem a well-defined alternative to simply fixing them up, but in fact buildings from each period pose different questions, not only about specific techniques and materials, but also about such invisible realities as the everyday living patterns and social attitudes built into floor plans characteristic of a period.

The Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee today endorsed legislation to strengthen the health warning on cigarette packages. The proposal, supported by a 15-to-1 vote, would replace the current general warning with a specific one saying, ''Warning: Cigarette Smoking Causes Cancer, Emphysema And Heart Disease; May Complicate Pregnancy And Is Addictive.'' Although the bill has no provision for the warning to accompany cigarette advertising, Senator Bob Packwood, Republican of Oregon, is expected to offer an amendment requiring the warning in advertising when the measure is considered by the full Senate. The committee's strong endorsement, especially by its more conservative members, and signs of the tobacco industry's willingness to compromise indicate that some legislative changes involving the cigarette warning label may pass the Senate this year.

The credit markets have been on edge recently because of fears that the Federal Reserve might have decided to tighten credit and thereby cause interest rates to rise. The most closely watched interest rate of all is the rate for overnight loans between banks, known as the Federal funds rate. Wall Street economists say they are not sure if the Fed has tightened its policy. But an increase in the Federal funds rate could be a sign that the Fed has made an adjustment.

Data General, the big computer manufacturer, had exported its products to Mexico for years. In 1980 the company had a 5 percent share of a $400 million market that was expanding by roughly 30 percent a year. The country's financial difficulties cut into the growth of the computer market, but Data General continued to ship its products. Last year, however, the roof fell in. The Mexicans, seeking to develop their own computer industry, imposed investment criteria requiring foreign companies with sales in Mexico to establish plants that would produce some components of their products locally - known as local content. ''If you agreed to those conditions,'' said John F. Cadwallader, Data General's manager of government affairs, ''then the Government would consider your investment application. Since then, a lot of companies have put in proposals for integrating into Mexico. We haven't, because it doesn't make good economic sense, and haven't done much business there since.''