DEAR MISS MANNERS: My husband and I have three children and live out of state from the rest of our family. My parents and two adult brothers are not especially organized and are rather busy people, and how organized and busy they are determines how little or how much they do to celebrate my kids' birthdays.

Sometimes we'll get a phone call, and/or a card, and/or a gift, and sometimes we'll get nothing. The "attention" they give varies from child to child and year to year.

The kids' birthdays are within 10 weeks of each other, so the inequities are glaring to me and I wish they would be more consistent. I will eventually get apologies and excuses like, "I forgot, I couldn't get to the post office," etc. I don't think they do this intentionally because they've always been this way (I've also received Christmas presents from them in mid-January), but do you think I should say something when, for example, my son's first birthday comes and goes and two family members do not acknowledge his birthday at all?

GENTLE READER: You might need to say something, but Miss Manners is not confident that you know whom to address, let alone what to say.

Should your children complain, you should tell them that presents are not an entitlement to be expected automatically; that they should know that their relatives love them even when they don't happen to fork something over; and, in the case of late-arriving presents, that not getting everything at once has the advantage of prolonging the occasion.

When you have thoroughly cowed them, Miss Manners would suggest confessing, "I know, they're always late, and it's driven me crazy all my life, but what are you going to do? We love them, and that's just the way they are."

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is it right to support an engagement to the engaged couple's face, but not really support what they are doing at all?

Recently, many of my friends have gotten engaged, and even more of them had weddings for me to attend every weekend. But I have two different sets of friends who have gotten engaged and none of our friends support the engagements.

Why are all of my friends talking of how horrible this engagement is behind their backs and supporting it to their face? Mind you, our friends who just got engaged are ages 20 and 21, and they have only known each other for four months and have already set the date for their wedding next summer.

What do I do? Do I support what makes them happy? Or do I show reservations because I think that the girl might not know everything one should know when getting engaged to a guy?

GENTLE READER: Loath as she is to support what must seem duplicitous, Miss Manners has to admit that your double-talking friends are acting within the bounds of propriety.

Only very close relatives and intimate friends are allowed to unburden themselves by asking, "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" -- not that it ever does any good. Others are not required to "support" the engagement, but merely to react pleasantly, with their congratulations, to a done deed. To ask them to be constrained from talking it over frankly among themselves would be even more futile than to tell a couple in love to proceed cautiously.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am a 24-year-old man, married two years to a wonderful, sweet, caring, compassionate, funny and all-around awesome lady. These are the reasons why I married her.

She is also drop-dead gorgeous. I'm not.

I can take some lighthearted kidding about that; I even kid about it myself. However, there are always some guys at work, parties, etc., who ask me about our sex life and why she married me over a nicer-looking guy.

I would never discuss this with anyone but my wife or perhaps a doctor, and find these questions appalling. I usually just mutter "Umm, that's a bit private," but all I get are more questions, laughter, etc. I know these guys think they are just being my "buddy," but I think they are acting disgusting. What should I say?

GENTLE READER: "What are you talking about? She tells me all the time how good-looking I am."

Miss Manners suggests pausing for a minute to let them think about that, because your buddies don't sound too swift. If no light goes on, you will have to add, "You mean it's not true? Then why would she say that? Do you think it's possible that maybe she just thinks so because she loves me? That ever happen to any of you?"

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My friend's daughter is getting married a year from now. When I mentioned what the groom's family is responsible for, such as flowers for the attendants and the rehearsal dinner, she said, "Oh no, they are also responsible traditionally for all the alcohol served at the reception."

I realize that nowadays a lot of mothers of the bride expect and ask the groom's family for help, but to me that is not as it should be. So, can you settle the argument regarding the alcohol?

GENTLE READER: Miss Manners fears that this situation is not going to get any better. You are all guessing wrong about something that is in a state of flux, and which requires goodwill and cooperation.

Your friend is in error about the alcohol -- does "his folks buy the booze" sound like a rule of etiquette to you? But you are wrong both about what the tradition was and about condemning it for having changed.

Traditionally, the bridegroom's parents paid for nothing. The bridegroom himself paid for the bride's bouquet and ring, boutonnieres for his groomsmen and the officiant's fee. All the entertaining expenses, including the rehearsal dinner, were borne by the bride's parents.

This may always have been unfair, but there was some thought of it as a last gesture before turning over all the bride's expenses forever to the bridegroom. At any rate, we now have been sensibly moving toward equalizing the situation, and it has become customary for the bridegroom's parents to give the rehearsal dinner.

Above all, it should be remembered that we are not talking here about a business deal, where certain parties receive certain assessments, but about families.

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At the highest levels of government, for work and during daytime ceremonial occasions, American ladies in official positions are now routinely wearing trouser suits.

(Well, at least senators, representatives and the ranking ladies who live or work in the White House are. You can never tell about those stylish justices.)

Miss Manners considers this an overdue triumph for decorum. The gentlemen are no longer subject to becoming overexcited by catching a glimpse of exposed ankle.

It is not often that she finds a sensible trend in the world of feminine fashion. Other such news -- heralding the return of what Miss Manners actually wears, such as hats, gloves and evening dresses with trains, rather than what she countenances in others, as she does the trouser suit -- typically amounts to nothing more than regularly repeated false alarms.

When the female equivalent of the male suit first began to be widely worn, it provoked outrage. Restaurateurs with fancy establishments declared that they would bar the door to ladies with the audacity to show up wearing pants. And that was in the first miniskirt era, when the same people had managed to accept the rapid retreat of hemlines -- apparently only with the proviso that that trend not be reversed.

At the time, Miss Manners refused to become aghast. The prescience of denouncing ladies' tailored trouser suits struck her as an invitation to join members of the French Academy, who had barred the Impressionists; and the first-night audience at Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring," whose musical sensitivity led them to tear up the theater. One does not recover from such reputations. And surely there is enough nasty business around to keep the discriminating busy without having to scorn what will soon come to be considered conventional, if not classic.

The grand restaurateurs' understanding of the gender factor in fashion did not improve after this defeat. When the law forced them to abandon their policy of hiring only males to wait on tables (with the notion that waitresses were better suited to simpler restaurants, where they could carry heavier trays for lighter tips), they dressed their waitresses in male formal dress, complete with bowties.

What this says symbolically is: We still have male service, but some of it is performed by male impersonators.

The difference between that and the female business suit, whether it has a skirt or trousers, is that the suit is an adaptation rather than an imitation. While benefiting from such advantages as freedom from worry of exposing various parts of the body to view and criticism and compatibility with low-heeled shoes, the suit retains feminine access to the full color spectrum and (with the addition of jewelry and scarves, and the addition or total subtraction of blouses) individualization.

More significantly, it provides that recognizably professional look that gentlemen have always been able to summon. In contrast, ladies were presumed to be present on official occasions only in a social capacity, and their prescribed wardrobes -- floaty dresses with whimsical hats for the most formal daytime occasions -- reflected this. Even now, there is an oddly reactionary tendency among young ladies to wear clothes to work that are amazingly, ah, social in original intent.

The trouser suit, in contrast, symbolizes seriousness. So do the skirted suit and the coatdress, if they are of decent length, and Miss Manners will personally stick with them -- despite that pesky problem of the provocatively exposed ankles.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have been noticing more and more at various dinner parties that the place settings are being done in a manner that appears odd to me. Over many years I have always placed the knife with the sharp edge of the blade toward the plate.

Now in many cases I see that sharp edge pointed away from the plate. Is this the correct new place setting arrangement, or not?

GENTLE READER: What are you thinking? That the Etiquette Council met one fine day and issued a proclamation that from then on, everyone was required to reverse all knives?

Not likely. What Miss Manners finds all too likely is that fewer and fewer people know or care how to do things properly.

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