In one of his rare philosophical moments in Monday night's ``Fighting for My Daughter'' on ABC, 18-year-old Eric (Chad Lowe) tries to tell his 16-year-old sweetheart why one of her schoolmates has started to sell her body to strangers.

``It's the world we live in,'' he tells her. ``If you don't have money, you're nobody.''

As it turns out, Eric pretty much lives by the same philosophy. Though he looks like a Boy Scout among the dark and sinister pimps who run the street girls in the large urban community where the movie takes place, Eric is already doing better financially than most would-be MBA's his own age. He does this by following his own success formula, which seems to be his knack for finding the youngest sexually active girls in town and turning them into profit centers.

In the familiar teen hooker TV movie genre, ``Fighting for My Daughter'' could have been just another flavor of the month. It doesn't have the shock value of such pioneering films as NBC's ``Dawn: Portrait of A Teenage Runaway'' (1976) and ABC's own ``Little Ladies of the Night'' (1977), the all-time ratings blockbuster for the genre. Nor does it have the dramatic punch of the genre's best _ ABC's ``Off the Minnesota Strip'' (1980), which won an Emmy for writer-producer David H. Chase.

Yet the film takes its own memorable place among the great teen hooker films by giving us a chilling two hours of insight into the moral vacuum that seems to exist among Generation X.

Eric Blakeney's teleplay deals with the gradual ``disconnection'' of 16-year-old Jessie (Renee Humphrey) from nearly all the safe, secure moorings that tether her to a normal life. She's growing more and more estranged from her devoted mother, Kate (Lindsay Wagner), and her respected grandmother, Judge Edna Burton (Piper Laurie). Her grades are beginning to spiral downward and she's losing friends at school.

``I can't seem to make anything work,'' she complains when she fails mathematics. ``I'm lost in the mall.''

The film suggests there are thousands more out there who are as ``lost in the mall'' as Jessie. They're looking for something meaningful in life but not finding it in households where making ends meet is the primary focus, or in classrooms where little time is devoted to the youngsters whose goals remain uncertain and unfixed.

A distance seems to be growing between Jessie and the classmates who already are primed for college and well-defined careers. Frustrated by her trouble with the increasing complexity of her schoolwork, she tends to focus on the things she understands: her physical beauty and her growing effect on young men.

It's the perfect formula for grooming a future hooker: Take a girl whose self-esteem is suffering and show her how to accentuate her physical attributes.

Jessie is even more motivated to think her sexuality is the best foot she has to put forward. Her single mom was a wild girl when she was Jessie's age, rebelling against a mother who was rigid and strict. Though Jessie's mom now is a straight arrow, she refuses to be strict with Jessie because she still remembers how it felt when her own mother would not trust her to do the right thing.

So, we get the distinct impression Jessie's sexual awakening has taken place without her mother ever suspecting it. And Jessie may have been encouraged to believe a little wildness is normal.

That's why it comes as such a shock to Kate when she learns her daughter is dating a pimp, running with hookers and other pimps, and cutting classes to do so. When Kate finally starts clamping down, she realizes it already may be too late.

Much of ``Fighting for My Daughter'' revolves around Kate's efforts to interest a jaded police force in helping her find Jessie and force her off the streets. At one point, the film moves into a very familiar track as Kate and a friend (Deirdre O'Connell) dress up as over-the-hill hookers to walk the streets in search of Jessie.

But that's not the interesting part. The only reason for watching ``Fighting for My Daughter'' is to explore the barren territory of 1990s teen morality as one soul-dead youngster, played forcefully by Lowe, works on the spirited Jessie, trying to break down her distaste for the idea of prostitution by convincing her the acts she'll perform will mean nothing to her emotionally, but lots for them both financially.

Newcomer Humphrey creates a convincing Jessie _ still a child in so many ways, but already aware that she possesses some mysterious ``commodity'' that grown men want from her.

In one of the film's most thoughtful sequences, an older, more mean-spirited pimp (Kirk Baltz) wisely deduces the way to break down Jessie's resistance is to pretend she has no real appeal to men because she's so inexperienced. He knows she'll eventually ask him to teach her what she needs to know _ and she does.

``Fighting for My Daughter'' may appeal to viewers who start rooting for her repentant mom to somehow turn the tide and bring Jessie back from the brink of disaster. But its real appeal ought to be its honesty in portraying a couple of youngsters who may symbolize the hollow space at the core of a whole generation.

FIGHTING FOR MY DAUGHTER

9 p.m. ET Monday

ABC