When I was in college, every extra cent went to pay my tuition and bills. I didn't have the money to fly to Mexico or Florida for spring break. (Besides, by the time spring break rolled around I was usually so stressed out that all I wanted to do was collapse on my parents' couch and watch TV.)

Now, though, the spring break trip is a standard rite of passage. Along with the required hand-wringing about girls gone wild, as if boys aren't doing the same thing. Natalee Holloway aside, most of the horror stories I've heard from spring break involve drunken young men getting robbed by the locals or doing headers into the concrete when they try to dive into swimming pools from hotel balconies. But the biggest outcry is over girls flashing their boobs and having cheap, meaningless sex. Go figure.

The solution is simple. If parents are really worried about their high school and college age kids getting drunk and screwing around on spring break, DON'T PAY FOR IT! Stand up for yourselves! You are not an ATM machine and it is eminently reasonable to refuse to pay for things that are frivolous or unwise.

Girls are under more pressure to grow up quickly than boys are. They're being sent the message early on that their looks, clothes, bodies, and sex appeal are their most important assets. And if you manage to shield your little girl from it at home, she'll pick it up quickly enough once she hits school. Girls clothes, girls toys, and girls media reinforce this message. (Look at the Bratz franchise: dolls, games, cartoon, clothing all pushing little girls to act like overly sexualized teens.)

Boys, on the other hand, are expected to have a protracted childhood followed by a protracted adolescence. There simply aren't the same kind of expectations placed on them. They aren't being pushed into becoming sexualized beings until they are in their teens, when their hormones are popping and they're ready for it. What boys face instead is early exposure to violence.

What's the outcome?

- You take the job but discover that you don't like working as a flight attendant: it's not as much fun as you thought it would be, it's hard work, the passengers are a pain, you get tired of traveling all the time, etc. So you find another job.

- You like being a flight attendant but get laid off when the carrier you're working for goes belly up. So you find another job, maybe as a flight attendant, maybe not.

- You like it and work as a flight attendant for a while, then change careers again when it gets stale.

- You like being a flight attendant and it becomes your career.

Any way you slice it, you'll learn an important life lesson and have some experiences you otherwise would not have.

A couple I know whose daughter died in utero at seven months held a funeral and buried the child in their family plot. Having a birth certificate that acknowledged their child's existence would probably have been comforting to them. Not every family may feel this way, though.

Ever try to get ANY feminine hygeine products in one of these "locked down" stores? A couple of years ago, I developed a yeast infection while we were driving to visit my husband's family in New Jersey. After we arrived late at night, my mother-in-law was kind enough to take me to her local, supposedly "24-hour" supermarket to get some medication ... where we discovered that the entire feminine products section was under lockdown! The clerk told us that it was because of theft. But he wouldn't let us in even when we asked him to escort us to make sure we wouldn't steal anything. Only the manager was allowed to let customers in, and naturally he was nowhere to be found.

Weirdly enough, the rest of the store was wide open. If we had wanted to, we could have walked off with, say, a filet mignon that would have cost quite a bit more than my stupid yeast cream.

This wasn't the only store that had this moronic policy, either. We ended up going to several places before finding one that would actually let us buy the stuff. We'd have had the same problem if we'd been in search of condoms, pads, tampons, or any other reproductive or feminine health-related product. (And the middle of the night is usually when you need this stuff the most.)

I'd go with your heart on this one. Plus, you need to get buy-in from your husband. (It's his choice, too.)

As for money, sometimes these things work themselves out. I had my first child when my husband was in grad school and I was working at a job that didn't pay a heck of a lot. Not exactly the best financial situation for having a kid, but we managed. (I think in some ways we were happier then, when we didn't have as much and therefore didn't have as much to worry about!)

You can cut back on your expenses and still maintain a decent quality of life and avoid the financial problems your parents had. Look at your bills and see where you can economize. Pack your lunch, take less expensive vacations, switch to a cheaper cable package or cancel it altogether (ditto with the cell phone), nurse your car along for a couple more years and buy a less expensive model when you need to replace it, hit the library instead of the bookstore, weatherize your house to reduce your heating bills, buy fewer clothes and gadgets, shop at thrift stores and garage sales, eat out less frequently ... be creative. You'll save quite a bit with only a modest hit to your middle-class lifestyle.

PS: Cary, please stop plugging the book .. you answer to the LW's question was pretty lame.

Complaining about the very movement that got her where she is today.

Although being the oldest of a gaggle of siblings, I usually sympathized with Beezus!