PLATTSBURGH -- Boyology 101: You shouldn't have to sacrifice yourself -- your identity, other friends, etc. -- to be in a relationship with a guy.

True, says Plattsburgh High senior Rachel Annis.

She and her boyfriend, Austin Wood, agree their relationship is enhanced because they include their family and other friends and respect each other's separate interests.

This tenet of "boyology" is part of advice 28-year-old Sarah O'Leary Burningham gives in her just-out book, "How To Raise Your Parents: A Teen Girl's Survival Guide."

Boys, too, she quickly added. Especially that chapter on "hanging out," aka dating.

"The thought of you hitting the town with someone who might kiss you (or worse) sends your parents into a state of total panic," she writes.

And why is that? Because parents know all the disastrous things that can happen, from date-rape to STDs. The best angle, then, she says, is to prove you're trustworthy.

MAKE IT REAL

Going a big way toward that is to let your parents meet the person you're going to go out with. What would have seemed like a given in the days of sweet 16s going steady isn't often part of today's reality.

"Some boys don't want to meet your parents," said Devin Buck, a Plattsburgh High senior. "That's a tip off right there it's not going to be a relationship you want to be in."

She said she learned the hard way that it's also unhealthy if he doesn't want to tell his friends he's going out with you.

"Often, girls have the impression they're in a relationship," she said. "It's not -- if it's only on his terms, only during certain hours.

"And a genuine relationship takes time."

"Hooking up" is the alternative, a term morphed in meaning from just "getting together" to "getting together for some casual sex with no strings attached," and Buck said the age for it is "even younger now."

Hooking up became a subject of hot debate a year ago when author Laura Sessions Stepp put out her book, "Unhooked." Critics said she wasn't allowing women the same freedoms as men. Others agreed hooking up damages women (maybe men, too) emotionally and physically.