DEAR MISS MANNERS: Please address the need to educate children in basic behavior, such as personal space, personal possessions and speaking on the phone. It seems basic manners has been lost, and children are unaware of their responsibility to be polite. Thank you from a concerned parent, grandparent and great grandparent.

GENTLE READER: You are referring to other people's children, Miss Manners trusts. As a great-grandparent, grandparent and parent, you have put years into rearing generations to have not only basic manners, but underlying respect for the needs and dignity of others.

Yes?

She feels it necessary to verify this because of the demands that so often accompany parents' outcries against mannerless children:

Why doesn't the school system teach proper behavior?

Why don't movie stars, athletes and rock stars set examples of politeness?

Why does television show people being rude?

And, most frightening of all: Why doesn't Miss Manners hold or recommend etiquette classes for children?

Because all these people have other jobs to do -- yes, even Miss Manners, whose sacred mission it is to spread the noble practice of etiquette -- and are not going to go around rearing other people's children.

Besides, it wouldn't work. Childrearing requires daily devotion over a period of years; it cannot be outsourced and compacted into a course. Truly effective role models, whether of good behavior or bad, are not the children's celebrity-heroes of the moment, but the people with whom they live.

Miss Manners admires and appreciates the many teachers, public figures, entertainers and others trying to provide such guidance for children who have been deprived of this by their parents. She has dedicated herself to spreading the need, understanding and practice of etiquette, but would appreciate more help from those directly responsible. So would their children, according to those who eventually try to catch up and complain to Miss Manners that their parents short-changed them.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: We will be invited to a couple's wedding this fall. It will be the second marriage for the bride, who has a son from the previous marriage. They are planning and paying for a large church wedding and reception, yet can not pay all their own bills consistently. A relative of the bride bails them out often from their financial obligations, and they have never repaid their debts to others.

I have expressed my disapproval of such a large and costly event, and am compelled to not attend in protest of the lack of responsibility the two of these people are displaying. Do you believe they are being irresponsible or am I being overly sensitive?

GENTLE READER: "Overly sensitive" is not the term Miss Manners would use to describe people who would boycott a wedding because the couple did not follow their financial advice.

Even she, who counsels against exaggerated weddings on taste grounds, including to those who can afford them, veils her eyes to dissention when she attends the weddings of those she cares about.

But wait -- those "others" who were not paid back by the couple or by the relative who bails them out. Are you one of them?

In that case, Miss Manners can understand your discomfort at being asked to watch the money you are owed being gobbled up by live doves and monogrammed balloons. She only asks you to decline politely without using the wedding invitation as an opening to explain your disapproval.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: Since this is the 21st century and not the 18th century, I thought that perhaps women's thinking had changed. Evidently, when it comes to spending money on others, it hasn't.

I would like to know the correct way to entertain the opposite sex when the woman insists on being a "friend" and not a "date."

A woman who became a widow two years ago, and evidently is still in mourning does not want to use the term "dating," so she would like to go for meals with me but feels I should pay the entire check. I told her that since she insists on our being friends and not dating, that the situation changes and that she should split the check with me.

After all, don't friends always split checks? And, as a friend, I wouldn't even get a good night kiss since I wouldn't be considered her date. Your opinion?

GENTLE READER: You had Miss Manners on your side until the good night kiss.

Before that, she was willing to overlook your strange historical presumptions in the interest of the eternal virtue of fairness. But perhaps we need to revisit them.

There was no dating in the 18th century, or, for that matter, in the 19th. Respectable ladies were courted by gentleman who paid calls on them at home, which meant that the ladies' parents bore the expense of whatever refreshments were needed to keep them at the task.

If the courtship was successful, the gentleman reciprocated by supporting the lady for the rest of her born days.

All right: not so fair.

Dating is a 20th-century concept, and although gentlemen paid the bills when courtship first went out on the town, ladies still had the urge -- or the sense of fairness, or the desire to be encouraging -- to be hospitable. Reciprocation took the form of such offerings as home-cooked meals, an aunt's unused theater tickets and hand-knitted argyle socks.

But there were those (Miss Manners can hardly refer to them as gentlemen) who had other ideas of how ladies could reciprocate. Possibly this was because they already had enough socks.

However, it smacked of the ugly idea that what we used to call ladies' favors could be bought for the price of a meal. Miss Manners is not accusing you, with your modest mention of a good night kiss, of sharing this vulgar sentiment. But that is where your argument leads. If you will bear with her, she will supply you with a better one.

That is that we have now evolved to the point where respectable reciprocity should be a factor in social relationships between the genders, whether they are characterized as friendship or romance.

Strict accounting is unseemly, and splitting each bill leads to pettiness along the lines of "You had dessert but I didn't" "But you took bites from mine," which is conducive to neither friendship nor romance. Also, people have different resources, so the style and cost needn't be equivalent.

But those who go out together, on whatever basis, should be considerate enough of each other to practice some form of reciprocation. Miss Manners leaves it to you to explain this to your friend, only asking that you omit the part about kisses.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When did it become rude to visit without calling first?

GENTLE READER: 1876.

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DEAR MISS MANNERS: Is my age showing when I feel that it is rude to be greeted, after I have placed a call, with "Hello, Dorothy"?

I know this means they have Caller ID, but I feel on the defensive, even before I have had a chance for them to hear my name.

GENTLE READER: They don't need to hear your name. It is right there in front of them.

But Miss Manners needs to know the identity of these people before she decides whether or not your complaint is legitimate. Some changes are sensible and necessary, in which case you are not excused from them on the basis of age -- but some are not.

While we are all used to having to identify ourselves on the telephone, there is increasingly less need to do so. When you visit someone you know, you are greeted on sight without having to state your identity.

The exception would be when you are telephoning someone with whom you are not on a first name basis or someone you don't even know -- for example, making a business call. No amount of time will rescue that from its being cheeky to call you Dorothy take advantage of technology to assume unwarranted familiarity.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am unsure how to respond to people when they compliment me and then pry as to how I do what they compliment me on.

I am of slight build on a tall frame and gave birth less than two months ago. I am already back into my pre-pregnancy clothing and have been for about a month. I don't work out and I don't adhere to some crazy diet to lose weight. I just can't gain and keep it on.

I am a stay-at-home mom, so I am always bringing our three children out with me to go shopping or to the playground. I live in a small community, so everyone knows everyone, somehow, and so they know me at least enough to feel it is OK to say hi and make small chitchat.

The compliment I don't know how to respond to is always about how I look so good after giving birth so recently. I always say "Thank you" and then get hit with "How did you lose the weight?" or something like it.

The truth is that I didn't do anything, and it is all genetic, but I don't want to seem like I am bragging. Should I lie and say that I didn't gain all that much due to morning sickness throughout the pregnancy (I only felt ill this time and never once actually was sick this pregnancy) or chalk it up to a hormone problem (I don't have one)?

Should I be adding something to the thank you to prevent this question? What do I do?

GENTLE READER: Certainly not make up stories about symptoms you did not have. Expectant and new mothers are hassled enough about their weight -- there is no need to encourage this by cooperating.

And Miss Manners finds it especially ludicrous to be apologetic for not having had problems.

You need only say "No special way" and move on or, out of comradeliness if another new mother is asking, "it's genetic." Or perhaps "I didn't lose that weight -- it's right there, in the baby carriage."

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