DEAR MISS MANNERS: In the old days, when colleagues and their wives would get together at parties, the "men" would talk business, and the "wives" would talk house and children. Nowadays, the "wives" are often professionals in their own right, and things can get sticky.

I am a female professor in a medical school department. When we have social gatherings, the "men" talk work and the "wives" talk, not so much house and children, but let's say "not-work."

If I stay with the "men" do I snub the "wives"? If I stay with the "wives," I'm missing some important conversation with my peers in the department.

I realize that the answer lies in mixed gender conversation, but the situation usually deteriorates into the situation outlined above. I wish to snub nobody, but I can't be in two places at once!

GENTLE READER: Have you been spending too much time in the Gender Studies department? Your use of quotation marks prompted Miss Manners to speculate that the wives weren't really wives and the men weren't really men -- and now you want to be two genders at once.

Miss Manners has heard that it has been done, but it seems unnecessarily complicated in this situation.

Even in the old days, when ladies and gentlemen (and maybe those are the terms that deserve warning quotation marks) separated after dinner by custom, rather than by inclination, the idea was only to quarantine the business talk and the cigar smoking so these questionable activities wouldn't spoil the entire party. Your implication that more important things were being said over the cigars alerts Miss Manners of your innocence of social history, as well as of your assumption that trade talk is more important than real conversation.

In any case, the artificiality of dividing all this by gender became apparent because ladies were smoking in the powder room and holding positions that made an increasing number of them have to be included in working dinners that had borne the curious label of "stag."

Miss Manners suggests that you not mess with our newfound liberty by making a point of noticing which gender is talking about what. Just join whichever conversation interests you.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My son sent me a very nice wristwatch for my birthday, one which I would not buy for myself, or wear, because it is too heavy and glitzy. I have a couple of good everyday watches, plus a Rolex which I wear occasionally.

Obviously, the gracious thing to do would be to thank my son and just leave it at that, but I'm a little annoyed that he would spend good money for a speculative gift in light of the fact that we have contributed to his financial health in the past, and I'm certain we will again in the future.

GENTLE READER: However, Miss Manners doubts that you will have to worry in the future about how to treat presents your son gives you. By linking the present with your own contributions, you use your own generosity to squelch his.

Presents should be accepted graciously, even if they are misguided. If your son lives above his means and expects you to bail him out, surely you can find other examples with which to upbraid him.

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A certain amount of childish behavior is to be expected at parties given in celebration of the birthdays of minors. However, Miss Manners would just as soon hope that it not come from the parents.

Some of them she would not trust, even blindfolded, to play pin the tail on the donkey. They are already far too eager and inventive about skewering one another.

Of course, she understands that everything parents do is motivated entirely by the desire to please their children. Can it be their fault that it makes their children happy for them to vie at out-classing other parents, to make a point of excluding certain children, and to encourage forms that foster social irresponsibility?

Only partly, Miss Manners acknowledges.

Children do appear to be born with some scary social inclinations. It is a parental obligation to disabuse them of the idea that they can get away with this.

The chief excuse for the birthday party, one of the most hazardous social forms in existence, is as a laboratory for teaching counterintuitive, and therefore civilized, behavior.

The young host or hostess has the difficult job of pretending that the guests were invited for their company as much as for the packages under their arms, and that they are there to have a good time, rather than to form an audience for whom the birthday child can be the center of attention. All of this being against every natural human inclination, it takes a lot of training.

But there are parents who seem to be training their children, instead, in acquisitiveness and self-centeredness. The forms that have burgeoned put an increasing emphasis on presents, including not just the present-opening ritual, but posting wish lists, and on glorifying and indulging the birthday child, regardless of the effect on guests. A particularly nasty innovation, for example, is to award the host prizes in any competitive games, regardless of performance.

Whatever this training is supposed to prepare them to become, it could not be decent, hospitable, considerate people. Maybe it is to become medieval lords, whose relationships with others consist of extracting tributes and exercising privileges.

In their own future interests, and that of the society on which these people will be unleashed, Miss Manners recommends parents' reining things in. Children being traditionalists, it would be wise for parents in the same neighborhood and school circles to set some limits.

Well-meaning ones have already made some moves toward doing this in regard to the guest list, for example, decreeing that everyone in a child's class be invited. (The less altruistic form, of demanding that all one's own children be invited regardless of acquaintanceship, is a bad one; a Gentle Reader whose parents demanded that said that the result was that the entire family was dropped socially.) Another method is reverting to the old rule of inviting only the number of guests equal to the child's age, thus limiting it to so few that being left out is no distinction.

Care should be taken that parties do not get big enough or expensive enough to put an undue burden on the hosts (and frighten the children). One solution is joint parties for children born in the same month, but then, care has to be taken not to put a burden on guests in supplying multiple presents when they might not be acquainted with all the honorees. An agreement on low-key parties and a low ceiling on present expenditures would help.

If parents replace competition with cooperation, they may find they can also make rules for their own convenience in regard to transportation, for example. If anyone is entitled to have a special day, they are the ones who earn it.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: We had arranged to meet some colleagues for lunch one afternoon during the workweek. While we only had one hour to eat, we waited 15 minutes for one of them to show up. How long should we have waited before ordering without them?

GENTLE READER: Fifteen minutes is the traditional time designated to wait for tardy guests to a formal dinner party.

And if one expects such an event to last for three to three and a half hours, figure the percentage of the time that a 15-minute wait would be, and allow that percentage for an hour's meal. (Miss Manners is not doing the math here, because she figures you would appreciate the opportunity to practice.)

In both cases, what makes chomping down polite is greeting the latecomer with, "We knew you would want us to go ahead without waiting for you, so we did."

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have noticed that in formal or semiformal table settings, the dessert fork is placed above the plate and parallel with the table edge. But it is always placed with the handle to the left. Why is this custom so universally followed? Most of my dessert-eating friends are not left handed.

GENTLE READER: So? Their fish, meat and salad forks appear to the left of their plates, and Miss Manners observes that they manage to get hold of those quickly enough.

Anyway, dessert -- either because it has an inherently sweet nature or because it appears when people are too bloated to fuss -- is eager to please everyone. While it is true that the dessert fork placed above the plate properly keeps its handle to the left, there should also be a dessert spoon, placed above the fork, with its handle toward the right. Dessert is truly an equal opportunity course.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My wife and I, now in our 60s and retired, have a good income, and everything is paid for. Over the years, we had many friends and entertained graciously, but now so many of our peers have died or retired and moved to warmer-climate communities.

We are overloaded with dishes, candelabra, silverware, serving dishes and industrial-size cookware. Sometimes I feel we had a restaurant in our home. I want to thin out some of these things. They take up room and space and are rarely used these days.

My wife won't get rid of anything. She is living in the past century and won't accept the fact that things are not going to be repeated, and our old friends are not going to come back, and those grand olde dinners are a thing of the past.

Do you think I am being unreasonable in wanting to have some of this stuff sold off, as we are very unlikely to use it for entertainment again? We are getting old, and I want less things around the house rather than having every nook and cranny, shelf and drawer filled with items that were used for entertaining.

We have fond memories and photographs, and I say that is enough. The equipment used for cooking and entertaining should be passed on to somebody younger who will get good use from them and go through the happy times we have had in the past.

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners is torn between siding with your wife and requesting a preview of the estate sale. After a fierce struggle, the unselfish side triumphed, and she would like to offer some testimony on behalf of your wife, along with a suggested compromise.

This is not to suggest that there is any right or wrong position in the subjective struggle between sentiment and clutter. She only wants to point out that the resources for entertaining are not just practical but, even unused, symbolic of a gracious way of living that your wife does not want to abandon.

Miss Manners' compromise is to keep just enough of your best china and silver and such for you and your wife to use every day, along with a few extras as replacements and for the apparently few guests you may still see. That way, your wife will not be forced to feel that narrowing your circle also means lowering your standards.

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