CONGRATULATIONS to Princess Beatrice. She has an unsuitable boyfriend. What a wonderfully normal 17-year-old thing to do.

We've all been there, haven't we? Mine was an Irish army deserter who used to ring up, drunk on Guinness, at two in the morning. Gosh, my dad really liked that.

Princess Bea's boyfriend, Paulo Liuzzo, is a 24-year-old New Yorker who two years ago was convicted of assault and battery following the death of a student in a drunken brawl.

Mmm... a bit tricky even for the best regulated families.

My friend Jackie - father a solicitor, mother the sort never seen without matching shoes and bag and white gloves in summer - went out with a Hell's Angel who used to roar up to the house to bring her home, leaving her mother lying awake in agonies wondering what on earth they were getting up to, until he roared off again, hours later.

Friends who are parents of daughters have endured all sorts, from men a lot older, with no job, no prospects, no English, but a couple of assorted children and a criminal record - "colourful,", they say, through gritted teeth - to the one with so many piercings in all sorts of places that he was known as Metal Mickey and another with top-to-toe tattoos and known as the Illustrated Man.

It is part of growing up, to push the boundaries, to try mixing with people from different backgrounds, with different values, in a bid to shock, or at least test the parents.

The princess's parents, Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, have risen gloriously to the challenge. A spokesman has said that they think Paulo is lovely, kind, sweet and wonderfully gentle. Good for them.

Because, of course, the best thing to do with unsuitable boyfriends is to welcome them in. However hard, it's worth the effort. Once they are seen to be totally accepted by the parents, they lose their shock value and become boring.

My Irish deserter, Jackie's Hell's Angel, Metal Mickey and The Illustrated Man have all long vanished.

If Princess Bea's boyfriend is as unsuitable, he too will soon melt into the past. And if he turns out to be genuinely lovely and long lasting, well, what a good job they made him welcome.

MANY years ago when the University of Teesside was still a polytechnic, I went there to learn to type. The secretarial bit was part of the Business School and we spent our free time with the lads who were doing degrees in Business and Management. There were at the time no girls on that course.

What was immediately obvious was that at least half the girls learning to be secretaries were brighter and more intelligent than nine tenths of the lads doing the business courses. Yet, even before they qualified, the girls were already doomed to earn less than their male colleagues - and might even end up working for them.

But for some reason - lack of ambition, lack of encouragement, lack of self-belief - it hadn't occurred to those bright girls to do the business degree themselves.

In all the years since then, you'd think things would have changed. And maybe they have but not far or fast enough. Women in full time work still earn 17 per cent less than men.

Some of that is because we value flexibility over high wages. Many women become mothers. Mothers still carry the main burden of child care and for the sake of our children, we compromise our careers.

Which is precisely why we should push young women to go for the best training they can, to get the best jobs they can, while they can. That way, they will then be able to afford to take a few years off to care for their children. Or have the financial clout to name their terms for part time working.

The only true independence is financial independence. Give your girls all the encouragement they can - so they don't end working for half the wages of men who are only half as clever.

Published: 01/03/2006