Word: moneys
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...business motive behind these shows--and other new series with major teen characters, or spin-offs of teen hits (The Parkers, Angel, Time of Your Life)--is simple enough: success breeds imitators, and the large (about 31 million), fickle 12-to-19-year-old demographic draws ad money. But the economics alone don't explain the high school vogue, nor why the shows include a couple of the fall's better premieres. True, high school programs are still often mired in soap-opera plots--see the randy Manchester, whose early glimpses just miss so-bad-it's-good status...
...what, after all, is popularity? Popularity--basing cliques on money and genes and je ne sais quoi--is class with training wheels. In a country that pretends it is entirely middle class, high school series serve as surrogate examinations of social barriers. (Or certain ones: while the great dramatic potential of high school comes from its throwing together kids whose parents don't work or play together, these shows are almost uniformly white.) This In crowd-obsessed setting comes as close as is Nielsen-feasible to admitting that class is still in session: that it does matter where you were...
When it comes to money, my parenting style lies somewhere between that of the Godfather and a game-show host: after the family's needs are met, everything else is negotiable. Periodically, I've taken a page out of the Good Parent's Rule Book and given my daughter an allowance, usually accompanied by a little speech about money management, the go-go stock market and the magic of compounding interest...
According to surveys, about half of parents don't grant allowances, and most others do it the way I have--haphazardly. Its proponents argue that an allowance can help a child learn about money, that he has to make choices among the many things he wants and must work and save for them. But there's a downside: an allowance can be a crutch for a parent. As long as the child can afford to pay for something--say, a barbed-wire wrist tattoo--a parent might be more reluctant...
Some parents also connect money to household chores or grade performance, which I think is a mistake. Your child should help at home because he is a member of the family and should work hard at school without a financial incentive...